Some Thoughts On…The Terror, Episodes 1 & 2

Quick note before we start, my “Some Thoughts On…” series will be different from my normal reviews or opinion pieces in the sense that they will be a bit more casual and loose. Like an unorganized, stream-of-conscious style dig into whatever piqued my interest at any given moment.

Anyway, onto The Terror!

This is a show I’ve been excited for some time. I like horror, I like period pieces, so naturally a period piece horror series looked like something that might be my jam. The Terror is based on the novel of the same name by Dan Simmons, which itself is a fictionalized version of the real life mystery surrounding the disappearance of two ships, the HMS Erebus, and the HMS Terror, led by Captain Sir John Franklin in 1845 after they set off for an Arctic expedition, which is a chilling story – even without the supernatural – if you want to read about it.

Oh, and by the way, since the first two episodes of the show aired tonight (“Go for Broke,” and “Gore,” respectively), I’ll talk about things as if it was just one big episode.

First up, I loved these two episodes.

It’s a show that evokes many things. There’s a little bit of Master and Commander in its very detailed and (seemingly) accurate portrayal of navy life in the mid-1800s, there’s a little bit of The Thing in unabashedly gory moments and the emphasis on the frozen setting, as well as the effect that it might have on the characters, and there’s even as aspect of The Descent, in how it manages to freak you out through circumstances first (i.e., you are stuck in a boat, in the Arctic, food will soon run scarce, the elements will never be in your favor, and there’s maybe some animosity between certain characters in this closed off environment), before they throw in the scary monster.

It also captures a very rare mood that I wish more horror films would try to lean on more, especially if it’s in a period setting. It’s like taking a peek into a nightmare in the mind of someone from that era. A recent example of a film that pulls this off perfectly is The Witch, which feels like I’m watching a nightmare from a Puritan settler, and it’s a story that folks would tell each other to freak one another out. The Terror captures that feeling very well, and I can eat up that kind of folktale horror up all day.

There’s a fairly large cast here, and two episodes isn’t enough to flesh most of them out, but the central conflict between Francis Crozier (Jared Harris), the concerned captain of the HMS Terror, and John Franklin (Ciarán Hinds), the overly optimistic and stubborn captain of The HMS Erebus, and the man in charge of the expedition, is a compelling one that I hope the show gets to dive more into.

So, yeah, if you’re into watching something full of mood, misery, and monsters, The Terror is a promising as hell series. You can catch it on Mondays at 9 pm EST on AMC. As far as covering them here, if I feel like I have something new to say about the show, then I’ll write about it, but otherwise, I’m just gonna enjoy the hell out of it. If what I described sounds like your jam, I highly recommend it.