Found this while trying to figure out what to watch after the most excellent Widow’s Bay. Fantastic premise and the horror parts are done very well by a guy who knows how to do horror. An exploration of how spirituality and religion are perverted and exploited by terrible people.
Faith is a signpost to who you are. So is what you fear. And the show takes a hard look at both those things. Riley is kind of my avatar in the story. Back in the days when I drank, there were times where I felt like the consequences weren’t going to apply to me. Everybody has a moment in their life where risky behavior meets good luck or bad luck. Riley’s just happened to go terribly wrong. The difference between Riley and so many of us is that he happened to be, in that split second, in a position where there was a direct and fatal consequence to someone else. And for me, that was always the really scary thing.
And as a former Catholic:
I wanted very much to try to tell a story wherein I would authentically try to inhabit both perspectives that exist within me about faith and about religion, to see where I came out.
It’s unfortunately interspersed by lots of three annoying things:
- God is Not Dead-level and style of exchanges between the non-believers (or the on-the-fencers) and the cloying faithful. I’m a sack of meat on this big rock around a fireball what’s it all about I am so lost. See this is the material realm bro, you need to yearn for the spiritual realm bro and so on.
- A ton of out of context Bible quotes (extremely annoying) delivered by the very worst characters (the point of the story but it was a lot.)
- Absolutely fucking interminable whinging and/or backstories and/or reminiscing by almost every major character. Like my wife noted, people just don’t talk to each other like this.
Spasmodic in its pacing due to these things. Seven episodes that could have been five, tops. If the Christianity in the show were a bottle of maple syrup, the first two episodes are like having a suitable amount of it over two pancakes. All except the last are like deciding to drink the rest of the bottle in four large gulps afterward.
Hamish Linklater, Zach Gilford, and (especially) Samantha Sloyan were casting perfection and inhabit their characters so freaking well. Sloyan’s character is in my Top 5 Punchables of Cinema. Rahul Kohli deserves special mention for the gravitas and sobriety he brought to his role.
The most unconvincing grandma I’ve seen outside of Hindi TV serials and Telugu movies.
The music is 💯