Main cast: Kirstin Allen (Alma Harding), Peter James (Henry Jakes), Brent Moss (Benjamin Harding), Will Bond (The Doctor), and Rip Torn (Narrator)
Director: Robby Henson
Oh, they have a new director onboard. Did one of the same few that show up on a regular rotation quit out of shame?
At Death’s Door is set in the South in 1864. Yes, it’s accent time, and given the general caliber of the people they pick to star in these episodes… well, at least my ears are bleeding by the end of the episode, thank goodness for little blessings.
We meet Alma Harding, whose husband Benjamin had gone off two years ago to fight those pesky Union soldiers. Since then, she’s been trying to keep things together for the two of them, but now her son Benjamin has contracted scarlet fever, and she is worried that he may not have much time left in this world unless the doctor she wrote to shows up soon. Poor Benjamin, after all, has started to deliver monologues about horsemen of death and what not, written clearly by adults that have no idea how little kids actually speak.
She also prays for her husband to come back too, although I’m not sure what her husband can do about the scarlet fever. Sadly, the powers above respond by having her house shelled and mortared by Union soldiers. When she comes to, she and her son are safe, tended to in their home by a soldier that calls himself Henry Jakes. He claims to have walked here on foot, tired and hungry, and found the back door opened. He says that he will only spend the night before the fire before leaving, but later, when he sees how ill Benjamin is, he decides to stay and watch over them until the doctor arrives.
What a surprise, he also claims to have served in her husband’s company.
Alma, however, is convinced that Henry is not whom he claims to be—not what he claims to be. No, she knows that he’s the horseman of death that her son babbled about in his delirium, who has come to take his son, and she will not let him do that.
Okay, this is going to be embarrassing to share, but I shed some tears by the end of this episode. What can I say? I’m soft when it comes to manipulative tearjerkers, and this one pulls at my heart strings so well. It’s pretty easy to guess the twist way early in the episode, as let’s face it, it hammers so hard that the boy is dying, to the point that it becomes obvious that the boy won’t die. So who will die? Well, the camera keeps making sure that I will always notice that laceration on Alma’s forehead, so gee, I have no idea, I tell you.
Still, this episode isn’t about twists or scares. It’s more about what a desperate mother will do to protect her child even from the Grim Reaper, and how, in the end, all her fears and concerns in this world are for her son, not for herself. The whole scenario is pretty poignant, especially when the show uses muzak violin scores to emphasize the heartfelt moments. Oh, and I am being manipulated, but the cast members for once are emoting well enough to drive the emotional dagger deep in my heart, so I don’t care. I am moved, and it’s a great feeling.
Interestingly, this episode may as well be a spiritual sequel to Beat the Reaper, despite the fact that both episodes take completely different approaches to the theme of dying and the nature of the protagonist. A cast member plays a similar type of character in both episodes, and if these two episodes occur in the same world, then it adds a pretty interesting layer to the nature and job scope of that character.
Anyway, At Death’s Door feels like it belongs to one of the better spooky anthologies out there, and I mean it as a compliment. It made me freaking tear up! How many episodes in this show can claim to have done that?
