Setting a ghost story against the backdrop of a major historical atrocity is a high-risk, high-reward proposition. As to the risk, no one can fault the filmmakers for a failure to take this troubling subject seriously, even personally. Promotional materials for the show indicate that lead actor Derek Mio’s grandfather was imprisoned at Manzanar, as was director Lily Mariye’s. Her grandfather died there, while her father’s family was killed by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; director Josef Kubota Wladyka’s grandfather survived the blast. And supporting actor George Takei, who also serves as a consultant to the show, was interned in two camps himself. So I believe the show is interested in chronicling and decrying this historical crime in and of itself, not merely as a backdrop for J-horror shenanigans, nor even as an easy allegory for the present-day horrors of the Trump Administration’s immigrant gulags.
But good intentions only get you so far. As a work of horror filmmaking, this doesn’t go very far at all.
Tags: horror, reviews, the a.v. club, the terror, the terror: infamy, TV, TV reviews