Main cast: James Remar (Bateman), Victor Rivera (Lampini), Valerie LeBlanc (Danielle), Lucas Godfrey (Burke), Andrew Bachelor (Jack), Hannah Fierman (Fawn), and Keith Arthur Bolden (Boone)
Directors: Joe Lynch and Greg Nicotero
The general theme of the two segments in this episode is a showcase of embarrassing and dumb things that one can do with the dead.
In Skeletons in the Closet, Lampini inherits a vast collection of movie props, most of them near priceless, from his late father. He uses the money he has inherited to set up a museum to showcase these props, and it’s about to open soon. Well, his father’s rival collector Bateman shows up at the worst time possible to cause problems, and oops, Lampini’s girlfriend Danielle kills him during the confrontation. Well, the guy is being super rude to her and her boyfriend!
This segment is noteworthy mostly for rattling off some of the most memorable props used in well-known horror films, with some playful pokes here and there on common snobbish beliefs held by horror movie purists.
However, this one has a pretty predictable story line and, worse, some of the most telegraphed scenes. Does anyone not see the incoming “homage” to the famous shower scene from Psycho when a female character starts to take off her clothes for her own shower? Then there is the “homage” to that famous scene in The Shining. I may be more impressed if these hadn’t been mere replicates of those scenes without anything interesting or fun added to make these scenes distinct—hence my use of “homage” earlier. Is it really a homage when it’s just a blatant reenactment?
Worst of all is the presence of some of the most atrocious dialogues I have come across in the cringe-filled track record of “Old man trying to act like they know how kids talk but they really don’t!” bad dialogues in this show. Poor Valerie LeBlanc is stuck with lines that make her character come off as annoying and dumb. Her character is actually fine, it’s just that they make her talk like an idiot, and that’s a shame. I may still be able to enjoy this playful but imagination-free Easter egg-filled love letter to horror fans better if I weren’t cringing every time these characters open their mouths.
In Familiar, a drunk Jack and his girlfriend Fawn on a lark visits a fortune teller, Burke, who then slips Jack a note telling him that Jack is being followed by someone… maybe something. Jack soon realizes that he is being stalked by something that Burke identifies as a familiar, and if Jack wanted to get rid of this thing, well, that thing will in retaliation get rid of everything that could sever its ties with Jack. Predictably, in the list of that familiar’s “to do off list” is Fawn.
Andrew Bachelor’s smirk makes him look more like a monster than the familiar, I tell you. That aside, this segment is another predictable one, with very obvious “homages” where appropriate, the most obvious being those to the crate that housed the Zuni doll in the 1976 anthology movie Trilogy of Terror. Also, I keep being reminded of Drag Me to Hell while I am watching this segment. The twist, if I can call it that, can be seen coming from early on as well.
This episode, therefore, is a pretty accurate encapsulation of way too much of modern horror and much of this show to date: it knows its tropes and it knows very well which older films to borrow heavily from, but it displays very little knowledge of how to make the things it lifts off those older movies to put together something that feels fresh and thrilling to watch. I get huge ho-hum vibes as I sit through this one, mostly feeling bored and disappointed that this well-produced episode still manages to come off soulless and empty.
