Critic Reviews

The sinister image collage is evocative, but ultimately a show like The Devil’s Hour is only as good as its pay-off. I, for one, am convinced enough by the early episodes to stick around and find out exactly how creepy a kid we’re dealing with this Halloween.

It’s great fun. Its many, many pieces – which if they gel will make it a great show in all sorts of other ways – are currently held together by Raine’s absolutely storming performance.

Take your average police-involved murder mystery and amplify it with creepy goings-on of both the real and imagined variety, questions of deja vu and busted memory, spooky kids, and some terrific performances from Jessica Raine and Peter Capaldi, and you’ve got The Devil’s Hour.

It’s almost perversely complex, but there are times when the multi-layering works beautifully.

The Devil's Hour never doubts itself for an instant, and even when it’s hard to keep things straight — which, I won’t lie, happened more than once for me — you’re never in doubt that it knows what it’s doing, that it’ll come to some kind of conclusion that feels right, even if it might not be totally satisfying.

The two of them [Jessica Raine and Peter Capaldi] together are dynamite, and worth the price of admission. (This was also true in Season 1, but they get much better material to work with here.)

You’ll need your plot goggles on The Devil’s Hour. Hints are dropped in the viewer’s path, without any promise that picking up on them will enhance your understanding. ... Some may find that gratification is too teasingly postponed.

The Devil’s Hour fails to concisely pull all its puzzle pieces together and satisfy. There is a sense of kitchen sink in the construction, which may make audiences thinking twice before investing valuable time in this convoluted premise. Only elevated by the conviction of those involved, this distinctly average supernatural thriller from Prime Video feels like a wasted opportunity.