Critic Reviews

Green’s characters are not perfect. Bolstered by fantastic performances across the board, they are living breathing humans who often struggle to do the right thing. Because when power is reclaimed, there’s a temptation to become the oppressor rather than to reset (or finally achieve) balance. Lovecraft Country expertly lets its characters wrestle with this complexity, exploring competing narratives and balancing justice with the understandable desire for revenge and need for catharsis.

The creativity on display is phenomenal, with writing that’s layered with meanings and allusions, acting that brings the kind of emotional grounding you don’t always find in genre stories, and visual realizations that are stunning as they pinball among influences including David Cronenberg, Guillermo del Toro, and, of course, Peele.

This show, which isn’t even addressing the movement directly, seems to speak to it most meaningfully. It’s no coincidence that Lovecraft Country is also the most entertaining series to grace our screens for months. Showrunner Misha Green knows how to find the joy in the moment – or in the pages of a good pulp novel – without denying the historical context. Perhaps even a blinkered bigot like Lovecraft would have come to admire that eventually.

Freedom allows Green and her collaborators to show their stunning command of the energy and spirit the story's blending of science fiction and horror requires. It means that every slice of the audience, from monster movie lovers to Dan Brown-style conspiracy thriller nuts and Indiana Jones fans, will find something to enjoy here.

From the use of gospel music to exude a Black woman taking back her power from the racists who attempted to steal it, to tackling peace and ancestral freedoms, to alternate realities that provide otherworldly opportunities to the oppressed, Lovecraft Country is must-see television — television that digs deeper to ask tough questions but still knows that biggest threat we will always have to combat is racism and our fight for equity.

Lovecraft Country is an utterly imaginative, wild ride, but it isn’t nearly as wild as the nonsensical bigotry that makes the series necessary.

More importantly, get used to this high-speed blender working spectacularly well. Each hour seems full to bursting with ideas and incident, as if Green wants to squeeze in as much as she can while she has the chance.

This is a show that hooks you fast — and one toward which it's nearly impossible to be ambivalent.

A smart, gripping and wonderfully wild 10-episode drama. ... To say that Lovecraft Country is a whole lot of show would be an understatement. Blood and jump-scares aside, the scripts pack in transcendent musical numbers, parties teeming with guests, sex both tender and terrifying, cinematic car chases that hit the spot in a summer without blockbusters.

The series is what academics would call a “rich text,” and one that the literal-minded would ding for being “unrealistic.” It footnotes itself as it goes, though rarely so ostentatiously that it denies viewers the pleasure of figuring out where certain influences came from and what the show is trying to say with them. With each new episode, we gain more appreciation of the thought that’s been put into every aspect of Lovecraft Country’s production.