Everything I’ve ever heard about Channel Zero, I’ve heard from other people on the internet. Perhaps that’s the way it should be. This rich, gorgeous, and astonishingly frightening horror anthology series takes the story lines for each of its four seasons so far from creepypasta — scary short stories in the form of faked message-board posts and comment threads. They’re the online era’s equivalent of urban legends, passed around from one terrified reader to the next. That’s how Channel Zero reached me, pretty much: from other impassioned viewers, desperate to persuade me to watch it too. The show infected them like a virus, until they passed that virus to me. And now … well, if you’re reading this, it’s too late.
But there’s so much more to the series than that slightly cutesy high concept, which I suspect turns as many people off as it turns on. Created by Hannibal veteran Nick Antosca, Channel Zero is full-service Good Television. It’s engrossingly beautiful and austere filmmaking, as shot by a different promising director every season. It’s a showcase for intriguing and surprising performances by a wide variety of talented actors, particularly women, who’ve led three of its four seasons. It’s a merciless autopsy of suburban disconnection, and how the few intimate bonds that are formed in that environment — with friends, with family, with lovers — can harm as well as help.
And above all, it’s scary. Just incredibly scary. I say this as a horror person, who crammed all four seasons down my gullet as fast as I could, alongside my partner, another horror person, and was flabbergasted by its singular, consistent, and prolonged ability to frighten, disturb, disgust. Take it from someone who endured several prestige-y limited-series adapted from famous horror novels/novelists this year: I was scared more, and more often, by the first scene in the first episode of the first season of Channel Zero alone than I was by quite a few other horror shows combined.
I came late to Channel Zero, but Julia and I burned through all four seasons in October and November and I’ve taken to it with the zeal of the converted. I tried to explain why in spoiler-free fashion (except for mentioning some characters and monsters) for Vulture. You’ve got to watch this thing.
Tags: channel zero, horror, nick antosca, reviews, TV, TV reviews, vulture