Main cast: Barry Nelson (Dr Vernon Rathmore), John Scott Clough (Alex Kritz), and Calvin Levels (Luchinski)
Director: Debra Hill
Far Below has an impressive pedigree: it is loosely based off Robert Barbour Johnson’s story of the same name and it is directed by the late Debra Hill, who co-wrote and co-produced many of John Carpenter’s most famous films.
Sure, it is also a Monsters episode, but this show has produced some surprises before with the right script and cast, so let’s see how this one goes.
Well, we have Alex Kritz, an auditor sent by the New York City city council to find out why the subway maintenance crew keep asking for so much money and why, despite the staff being paid obscenely high amounts of salary and given ridiculously generous perks, there remains a high staff turnover.
He is the stereotype of the young, arrogant pencil-pusher that thinks he knows more than Dr Vernon Rathmore, who has led the crew for almost 30 years, how to do things. This causes him to clash with Vernon a lot, especially when Vernon’s crew works in an unorthodox and even violent manner for a good reason.
You see, there are things lurking in the subway tunnels, dangerous things…
Forget the original story, for this one is almost entirely set within Vernon’s office, and the focus is more on a young asshole clashing with a loony old fart.
The original story dealt with madness that can transform one in the darkness, here it’s about office politics and Alex often being a contrarian just to get the last word and make the audience hate him even more. While I’m sure this is okay for folks that have not read the original story or can adjust their expectations, I personally cringe a bit at how a lovely dark slice of cosmic horror is reduced to… well, something else entirely.
Perhaps my expectations were set too high with the opening scene of some poor maintenance guy getting dragged off into the darkness, but the rest of the episode is just talk, culminating with a twist best described as a inter-species romantic sitcom moment.
On the bright side, the late Barry Nelson mugs and chews scenery in a most entertaining manner here, and John Scott Clough does a solid, if thankless, job of playing the smug and arrogant corporate douchebag that everyone knows and hates at least one of in their lives. Their performances keep the episode very watchable even when most of the it is made up of just expositions and argument in a room.
All in all, this is a pretty entertaining episode. Just don’t compare it to the source material, or expect something really scary, and one will be fine.
