“Ma,” says Chester Nakayama to his mother, “this may not be the best time to tell you this, but I’ve been going with someone.” All around them, Americans of Japanese origin or ancestry are being frog-marched by armed soldiers. “Her name is Luz.” These soldiers, or soldiers like them, had previously forcibly evicted all these people from their homes, and now they’re being forcibly evicted again. “Her name is Luz Ojeda.” The troops had already taken all men born in Japan and whisked them away to parts unknown. “Ma, look at me.” Everyone with so much as “a drop of [Japanese] blood” is subject to this discriminatory relocation regime. “Luz is pregnant.” Chester and his mother and everyone they know who hadn’t already been disappeared by the government are now being herded onto a racetrack. “She’s going to have my baby.” They’re going to live in horse stables.
Yeah, Chester, this may not be the best time to tell your mom all of this. Actually, let me put it a different way. Yeah, makers of The Terror: Infamy, you were right, this is most definitely not the best time to have your main character tell his mom all this.
Unless the point is to demonstrate why this iteration of AMC’s anthology series isn’t working, in which case the timing is perfect. Titled “All the Demons Are Still in Hell”—it’s taken from a characteristically stiff line about evil spirits, which in context indicates the opposite of what isolating the phrase as the title implies—the second episode of The Terror’s second season is a lot like the soldiers in that ridiculous scene. It marches the characters from place to place, forces them to make various declarative statements, and then whisks them onward for the next round. Subtlety, nuance, and (god forbid) scares are all in short supply.
I reviewed the second episode of The Terror: Infamy for the A.V. Club. What a bummer.
Tags: horror, reviews, the a.v. club, the terror, the terror: infamy, TV, TV reviews