‘Them’ Series Premiere Recap: Our House

Horror should be scary. I’m pretty unequivocal about this, so I’ll repeat it: Horror should be scary. A simple enough proposition, you’d think, but sit through a few nominally horror television shows and you’ll be shocked to discover how disinterested many of them seem in upholding this central tenet of the genre. Lovecraft Country? A bunch of boring CGI monsters and a rhythm that never allowed the show to develop any tension or dread. Clarice? Not bad as far as CBS cop shows go, but it’s not even playing the same sport as Hannibal or The Silence of the Lambs, let alone playing in their league. The Stand? Somehow they took the best book by the biggest horror author of the past century and made it about as frightening as one of those videos they make you watch during jury duty. There have, of course, been some genuinely frightening shows over the past few years—Channel Zero, The Terror, The Third Day, Twin Peaks: The Return—but far too often the chaff outweighs the wheat.

Television dramas should be art. This one might be trickier to explain, but again I’ll double down: Television dramas should be art. They should look like thought went into the shot compositions, the lighting, the editing, the use of music, the staging of scenes, the pacing of an episode. They should do more than is strictly necessary to convey character beats and story advancement. This is something literally all of the dramas you care about, the ones worth a damn, have in common, and yet it’s in surprisingly short supply, even when there’s rich source material to draw from and make your own as a showrunner. His Dark Materials looks stately and inert despite being drawn from one of the most iconoclastic fantasy series since Tolkien birthed the modern fantasy genre. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is literally a continuation of the most lucrative film franchise in history, and it’s shot with all the panache of a commercial for a furniture store. People flipped the fuck out about WandaVision and all it is is a season-length adaptation of that Roseanne episode where they go to Gilligan’s Island—that’s how desperate viewers are for TV to do something extra, which is where art lives.

Them is scary. Them is art.

Directed by Nelson Cragg from a script by series creator and showrunner Little Martin—who establishes himself instantly as a powerful new voice in the field—the pilot episode (“Day 1”) of Them (subtitled Covenant; it’s conceived of as an anthology series)…how should I put this…it does not fuck around. From the opening iris out on a little house on the prairie overlaid in blood red to the concluding drop of a blood-red “THEM” logo, it knows what it wants to be and wastes no time getting there. This is a show about the horrors, the literal horrors, of racism, and neither the family at its center nor the viewers watching it home are given a chance to breathe. It’s all tension, all dread, all terror.

The plot could not be simpler. After an unseen but obviously tragic incident at their home in North Carolina—one that begins with a frightening woman (an outstanding Dale Dickey) singing the racist ballad “Old Black Joe” and ends, it appears, with the death of an infant—Henry and Livia Emory (Ashley Thomas and Deborah Ayorinde, both excellent) pull up stakes and move to a beautiful new home in the lily white Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Once there, they are confronted immediately—and I mean immediately, this show is not concerned with “maybe we can win them over if we just give it a shot” time-wasting—by the incandescent racism of their neighbors, led by platinum-blonde Betty Wendell (Alison Pill).

The local women surround the Emory’s new home, parking themselves in lawn chairs and just staring at the house while blasting offensive music. While they gather to crack racist jokes and vow to make Compton a worse place than wherever the Emorys fled from, their menfolk drink in the garage and plot their first big move against the family: killing their adorable dog, Sergeant.

But some…thing beats them to the punch. The Emorys’ younger daughter, Gracie (a painfully adorable Melody Hurd) has begun communicating with Miss Vera, the fictional author of a book of manners for girls that she’s been reading. Miss Vera has taught her to sing “Old Black Joe,” and Gracie’s performance of the song leads her deeply traumatized mother to strike her. (Gracie’s reassuring “It’s okay” after Livia apologizes is perhaps the episode’s most brutal emotional beat.) And Miss Vera sits waiting in the kitchen when Gracie wakes up in the middle of the night, looking for her dog. Miss Vera assaults her, very much like the cackling old lady in The Shining assaulted Danny Torrance. And when Henry wakes up and investigates, he finds Sergeant dead in the (very obviously haunted) basement, with his head turned 180 degrees around.

It’s enough to make Livia snap. Grabbing the handgun she painstakingly loaded while complaining about the “bitches” and “motherfuckers” making their new life hell (again, the show displays a satisfying lack of fucking around with regards to language), she runs screaming into the front yard, pointing the gun and shouting uncontrollably to the neighbors to leave their home alone. The neighbors watch, aghast. After all, isn’t it just like those people to act that way?

Them is about the real-life horror of racial covenants, which excluded Black families from home ownership in certain neighborhoods and towns. Harold chose to move to Compton despite its covenant past because covenants are, at this point, illegal. But there are other ways to enforce the racial hierarchy, as Betty and company realize very quickly. In essence, Livia and Henry are inverting the fundamental, foundational myth of America—the myth of the pioneer, moving into a land that doesn’t welcome them—only it’s the white people who are the true savages. One need look no further than the 1/6 insurrection or the new Jim Crow voting laws in Georgia or the anti-trans bill in Arkansas or the union-busting zeal of the well-to-do spokespeople of Amazon, the company airing this show, to see the truth in this.

But cinematically, Them is about more than that. It’s about the way the light looks on a sunny California afternoon, and the way the night looks in the well-lit home of a family that loves each other’s company. It’s about framing Livia and Henry up against the edge of the screen as they talk to each other, conveying their intensity and intimacy. (There’s a closeup on the two of them after kissing that’s just achingly, ferociously romantic.) It’s about the kind of staccato editing that represents Livia’s terrible memories, and the brutality of her current predicament. It’s about sparing the audience a bunch of getting-to-know-you bullshit and moving right to the stuff that’s frightening and unpleasant and vital. It’s about how sometimes the pain and fear we face is so overwhelming that the vocabulary of the quotidian fails us, and we must reach for the supernatural for recourse. It’s beautifully shot. It’s thoughtfully edited. It’s mercilessly written. It’s the best new show I’ve seen this year.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch THEM Episode 1 ("DAY ONE") on Amazon Prime