When it
comes to consuming horror media, I’m a bit of an oddball. While I love scary
novels and listening to spooky podcasts about ghosts, I absolutely hate
horror movies and television (with an exception of Supernatural,
but that’s another story). Why this is, I have no idea. Regardless, I
knew this was something I had to overcome when October rolled around for
the first time since I started these reviews; people want scary for Halloween,
so I am going to review something scary for Halloween. One thing that
caught my eye was Hulu’s new anthology series (or miniseries…
that’s kind of unclear from what I’ve read) Monsterland. But
while I found it well acted and occasionally frightening, Monsterland is
not really what I expected: Instead of being a story about monsters
stalking people across the USA, it is more about the monstrous things that we
as humans are capable of. The actual monsters are more of a feature than the
point, but if you know this beforehand there is still a good time to be
had with Monsterland.
Perhaps the
focus on the potential for evil in humanity shouldn’t have caught me
off guard (the tagline for the series is “fear the monster inside us all,”
after all), but it was still a bit of a let down when the first
episode ended and I found myself bummed out instead of
terrified. Monsterland is a far-from-lighthearted
affair that features heavy thematic elements and damaged people in
depressing circumstances. It’s not what I would call “fun” by any stretch of
the imagination, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad; there are still bouts of
terror to keep the audience from wallowing in empathetic despair for too long
(this is how you do it, The Devil All the Time. Look forward
to my review of THAT depressing slog soon if it hasn’t come out
already). Other pluses are the acting, which is well done in
every episode, the score, which is impressive, varied, and adds greatly to the
tension, and, best of all, the fact that the series treats you like
an adult. You’re never really spoon-fed anything in Monsterland,
and each episode has at least one moment that requires the audience to
come to their own conclusions. It is, in other words, a series that
begs (well, let’s not go crazy here… let’s say “asks politely”) to be
discussed and argued over long after the credits roll (or long after
Hulu has skipped to the next “recommended” series). Or is “best of all”
the fact that one episode is set in our very own Eugene, Oregon? I can’t
decide.
Like all
anthologies, Monsterland has some episodes that are better
than others, but all-in-all the series is worth your time if you’re looking for
something a little more thoughtful and a little less fun this Halloween. If a
nonstop rollercoaster of thrills is something you’re after, however, best
look elsewhere.
Just don’t
look under the bed.
Monsterland is
now available on Hulu.
This
review was first published in The Keizertimes on November 20th, 2020. Visit at http://keizertimes.com/
Hindsight: What a horrifically cheesy way to end a review. Also, why did I feel the need to mention Supernatural in my intro? Between when I first submitted this article and when it was first printed, I had to do a couple of re-edits because The Keizertimes did not run it before Halloween like I thought they would (pretty big gap, if you notice the date on it). This is the original. A director's cut, if you will. Lucky you.
Your apparent dissonance between the horror genre in other media and horror as present in Hollywood in general is not surprising to me. While the stories in other media focus on the thrill and suspense of the story, they do not do so in detriment of the story itself. Film Horror on the other hand is generally driven by the "jump points" at best or straight up gore and creepiness at worst in slash films. This usually means that the story is diminished down to tropes and single dimensional characterization. Sometimes this is played to its benefit (Here's looking at you, Cabin in the Woods), but most often it falls short of the good points of the story telling - ie getting lost in the story. The pitfalls of common horror films pull an enlightened viewer out of the story and cause that massive disconnect.
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