Category: Supernatural historical drama
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If you loved the first series like I did, you will be disappointed by the second series. Not because it's a bad series - far from it - but because this series only shares a name with the original, not any narrative connection. However, where the first series featured more an atmosphere of dread, this series features a lot more actual supernatural horror.
The Terror: Infamy tells the story of Chester Nakayama, an American-born Japanese person caught up in two horrors - the first being the forcible detainment of Japanese people during World War 2, and the second being the vengeful spirit of his *spoiler alert* mother who wants her son to come with her to the afterlife.
With regards to the first horror, the producers went to great lengths to tell the story of the program of forcible detainment the US government enacted - you may recognise George Takei, who himself was detained as a child, and it turns out that most of the cast and crew have some personal connection to the detainment program.
There are two large positives for this series - the first is that the production values are just as good as the first series, and the second is that it doesn't pull punches with the racism of the time. America indeed did mass-detain people in the misguided belief that any random Japanese person was potentially a traitor simply on the basis of their nationality and not because of any specific intelligence.
But there are also three very negatives that detract from what is otherwise a great horror creation:
The first is that gruesome deaths for the sake of gruesome deaths has become a bit passe - I would have liked the deaths to have more relation to the vengeance the woman was seeking. For example, why does the spirit make the first woman kill herself in the specific (but seemingly random) way that she does? We don't know and we never find out. Why does the vengeful spirit specifically blind the man, and how does he not realise who it is that he keeps on seeing in his blindness, despite being the very same woman who he rejected years ago? Why does the spirit cause a lowly camp guard to jump off a watchtower, but NOT cause the Major in charge of the camp to die or make him kill himself? Does having a higher rank in the army somehow afford you better defence against the supernatural? These questions don't seem to have clear or sensible answers.
The second (spoiler alert) is to do with a plot-hole regarding Chester and his mother - when Chester goes over to Guatemala, his mother (in deliciously hideous bodily form) finds him and calls him by his birth name (suddenly ending the episode). But then when Chester gets back to America, his mother tries to kidnap…random other children…even though she has already found her son, knows what he looks like, where he is staying and even appeared to him in a brothel. Why tho?
And lastly - too much of the last episode is dedicated to the feel-good ending. The action-horror was over by the first half of the last episode (which in itself came across as a bit contrived) and then the rest was the "happily ever after", a massive contrast to the rest of the series which was all about fear and dread, and also to the ending of this first The Terror where the ending was a lot more bleak.
In short, I feel the producers tried to make a political statement that started off as a horror story, rather than make a horror story against a political backdrop.
I binged this series in 1 day - that's how hooked I was. The writing (despite the plot holes) was quite good! But it loses out on a 4+ rating simply because the ending really was a let-down.
FINAL RATING: 4/5 stars.
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