Humor aside, the project this episode brings to mind more than any other — and not just because they share a composer, Baltimore musician Dan Deacon — is Unedited Footage of a Bear, the terrifying 2014 Adult Swim Infomercial whose drum I never stop banging. (I’ve probably talked more about this short film than the filmmakers, Alan Resnick and Ben O’Brien, have themselves.) The slow descent from happy parenthood to isolated misery; the emphasis on how mothers in psychological distress often go un- or under-treated; the portrayal of severe mental illness as something so close to the supernatural stuff of horror that it’s a distinction without a difference; the use of both the family and the phone as vectors for fear — it’s all there. I don’t mean to imply this is a rip-off, because it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination. I do mean to imply, however, that this episode is eerie enough to merit comparison to one of the most frightening things I’ve ever seen on television.
As was the case with Unedited Footage, the lead performance is the load-bearing structure here. Like twin actors Kerry and Jacqueline Donelli in that earlier project, Clark Backo transitions so seamlessly from perky, fun mama to glassy-eyed, sallow-faced living zombie. Her paranoia and dread, which either bring on or are brought on by her sleeplessness, have turned her into something less than herself — a being one macabre half-step out of sync with the world around her, like a mirrored reflection that somehow begins moving a brief but unmistakable moment after you do. By episode’s end, you too want to keep this poor person and her poor baby away from each other, for both their sakes.
LaKeith Stanfield’s assignment in this episode is a comparatively easy one: Be normal, be a good dad, be a pretty shitty friend, and be ready willing and able to distance yourself from your obviously sick wife after months of this shit have you at your wits’ end. But in a horror series, playing the character who doesn’t realize something is capital-W Wrong actually is hard work: You have to keep the audience caring what happens to you even as your ignorance or unwillingness to see what’s happening drives us away. Stanfield’s not doing the gangbusters work Backo is in this ep, but what he is doing is impressive in its own right.
I reviewed episode two of The Changeling for Decider.
Tags: decider, horror, reviews, the changeling, TV, TV reviews