I watched the first season of Channel Zero, Candle Cove, in-between football games yesterday. It's the first time in a while I've legitimately sat and binged a single show all at once, but each season is only six episodes, and it's an anthology with different stories each season, so it's the kind of short binge I can get into. It's fun. I like TV horror because they tend to opt for slow-burn creeping dread over shock and jump scares. Candle Cove really pushes at the boundaries of the creeping dread stuff with its visual style, too. Lots of lingering shots in dark rooms, people staring off into the middle distance, and reeeeaaaaaallly slow pans followed by hard, quick cuts. It causes a sensation that I haven't really seen tried much in horror before, but that I like a lot. Mostly, it's a quiet kind of horror show, and it works. I think it helps that there's never a question about the reality of the monsters. They're revealed as "real" pretty much from the beginning, which was surprising, since the protagonist was established from the first scene as having a tenuous grasp on reality.
There's a lot of stuff that's in there apparently for the visual impact, but is left more or less unexplained. I'm still puzzling over the whole theme about teeth -- I just don't think it was ever adequately fleshed out, even though it was clearly an important element. But still, good stuff. And apparently, season 2, No-End House, is even better. Based on the title, I'm pretty excited. I love the concept of bigger-on-the-inside, haunted, endless architecture.
