Critic Reviews

The series runs like clockwork in that nearly every five minutes, in the episodes we were presented, there is a legitimate unsettling scary moment to whet your whistle for terror. The series is sure to go down as a horror classic, so prepare yourself and enter Candle Cove. You won’t regret it.

Individually, the strands of “Butcher’s Block” are compelling in their own way, but the separation between them makes for a slightly bumpier story that occasionally gets stretched a tad thin.

Reliably chilling horror anthology. [19/26 Oct 2018, p.92]

Channel Zero’s more mundane approach to horror might keep it on the outskirts of popular attention, but the show is all the more compelling for its restraint.

The series still manages to be the best horror show on the air right now, and it is certainly worth your time as it offers frights and character work that are surprisingly strong. Despite a few missteps, No-End House is a delight.

The show’s six-episode second chapter, debuting this week, is terrific from stem to stern, taking a story that would seem unlikely to translate well to television and turning it into an eerie, Twilight Zone-style tale of suburban conformity, post-high school depression, and the inability to escape the legacy of one’s parents.

That visual language and emboldened aesthetic give Butcher’s Block a distinct flavor from the previous two installments. It’s easily the most striking and eye-catching season, but it also has a distinctly twisted sense of humor that pops up between--and sometimes during--the moments of ringing terror.

Channel Zero reliably keeps the narrative tight with a six-episode run and with The Dream Door, Antosca wisely maintains focused on Jillian and Tom’s relationship and the baggage they bring with them. There are some missteps when the focus veers toward unnecessary characters or developments, but the heart of the story pays off very well in the end.

The Dream Door is straightforward enough for a change, but that’s not the show’s strong suit; getting strange, scary, and logically unjustifiable are where it soars--just like a nightmare.

Once it gets going, Channel Zero: Candle Cove smartly peels back additional layers of its central mystery so that the audience won’t be satisfied until they finally get to the core of what really happened in Iron Hill all those years ago.