Main cast: Ahmad Rashad (Sergeant Kenner), Antone Pagan (Corporal Torres), Glenn Kubota (The Lieutenant), and Mitchell McCormack (Zombie)
Director: David Severeid

Monsters is always considered a more family friendly alternative to some of the more grown-up and nasty anthology shows out there, but oh boy, the people behind this show seem determined to blow that perception sky high in its third season.

Case in point: The Hole, a zombie episode that may not seem as frightening to grown-ups, but it likely will scare the living daylights out of the kids that tune in.

The story is pretty simple: Sergeant Kenner and Corporal Torees, two American Marines serving during the Vietnam war, infiltrate a Vietcong underground bunker with the aid of a South Vietnamese lieutenant that doesn’t even get a proper name—perhaps only American characters have the privilege of getting names on this show.

They encounter a dying soldier that warns them about how the Vietcongs inadvertently dug the tunnels through an ancient cemetery, disturbing the dead that are now out for blood. The angry dead are fed up of blood being spilled onto the grounds of the country, and now they will emerge from the walls and grounds to slaughter all that enter these tunnels. Oh, and there is no escape from these tunnels.

Considering that they are already in the tunnels, it looks like their fates are sealed. Can they ever get out with their lives intact?

This episode is exactly what it says on the box—no twists, no turns, just unexpectedly well done zombies emerging to slaughter people in ways that are surprisingly gory and explicit for this show.

The main characters have cursory personalities—Kenner is on his second tour of duty, Torres will get to go back to America in two weeks so he just wants this mission to be done and over with quickly without putting his life in danger, and the Vietnamese is… er, Vietnamese—but that’s okay, because they exist only to be pitted against men in costumes that actually look pretty decent for once.

Plus, the episode moves at a brisk pace, and there is a well done sense of claustrophobia permeating the whole thing.

I also like that it doesn’t rely on loud cheap jump scares to hammer home the scares. Some of the scary scenes can seem hokey at first, but the zombie assault later on is well done and I suspect will be the stuff of nightmares for impressionable kiddies that happen to watch this episode.

Anyway, this one isn’t deep, but it does its job well and serves up a satisfying slice of old school zombie horror. Four oogies for an all around solid episode!