“The Terror” is a different kind of horror show. At least the first season that I watched today & yesterday definitely is. I started watching it expecting some terrifying kind of horror. The poster had Jared Harris as a captain and I thought the story would be about zombies and other mysterious creatures attacking a bunch of seamen stuck somewhere. Lots of blood and gore basically.
Sure the show has a mysterious beast but that isn’t the central character. In fact it is even missing for most episodes, making a return towards the end. The real horror of the show is the people themselves. A group of people stuck on the cold and frozen Arctic Ocean, unable to move forward or go back, slowly being poisoned by something in the food and “losing it”… that’s the premise basically. It’s a slow burn horror show if you could call it that. Lots of character development, some amazing camera work, and the environment itself plays a role and is well captured. Think “Lord of the Flies” meets “The Leftovers”.
A lot of the scenes are setup in a way where you’d expect something to happen. Like a monster attack for instance. But nothing happens. The camera lingers ever slightly slow and you tense in your seat waiting for something… but nope. It’s almost as if the writers/ directors know you expect that and so toy with it to break you out of that expectation. This is a different sort of horror, they want to say, you are not going to get mindless gore and violence. :)
Got to watch season two now. It’s a different story, that’s good. I love it when shows have separate seasons that are only united thematically but don’t have any common story or characters.