The Terror: An unsettling, suspenseful season that constantly tested your endurance
By Drew Koenig
AMC’s The Terror recently wrapped up its first season after putting its characters and the audience through a crucible for ten episodes.
In recent years, we’ve seen a kind of resurgence in horrific television that has pushed how far the television format can take a genre that normally only needs to sustain itself for around two hours, including American Horror Story, Scream, Channel Zero, and Hannibal. Some of these have been more successful than others, and in different ways, but The Terror continues this trend and shows how to sustain the necessary kind of fright and dread over an entire season.
Inspired by the real life events, The Terror follows the crews of the HMS Terror and Erebus in 1848 as they search the arctic north for the ever elusive Northwest Passage, which would give England easier access to China and the spice trade, and are trapped in the ice after a particularly treacherous winter.
As they search for a way out and a way to survive in the brutal environment, the crews find themselves under attack from a demonic polar bear intent on picking off the crew one-by-one.
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The polar bear acts as not just as the catharsis to break apart the tension that pervades so much of the series, but also as the physical manifestation of the ever-present threat that is the deadly place that the crews find themselves in.
The Terror, more than anything, knew how to build upon its suspense to the point that it felt unbearable and released it in such a succinct fashion that it felt like the big moment of the season, except it would do so again and again throughout its run. Such a feat isn’t easy but The Terror accomplishes it in what feels effortless.
The other component to The Terror‘s success is its deep bench of actors and strong performances.
Between Jared Harris, Ciaran Hinds, and Tobias Menzies, you already have an outstanding cast that it would be hard to surpass, but you also add Paul Ready as the surgeon Dr. Goodsir and Adam Nagaitis as the duplicitous Mr. Hickey and you have a roster of performers that is unparalleled and endlessly compelling.
More than anything, The Terror understood what it takes to get under the audience’s skin and to strike just the right nerve at the right time. Not every show can do that and that makes it all the more impressive for The Terror.
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The Terror is expected to come back for a second season in anthology form that will tackle another historical mystery such as this one.
Where would you like The Terror to go next? Let us know in the comments below.