A Black family moves to an all-white Los Angeles neighborhood where malevolent forces, next door and otherworldly, threaten to taunt, ravage and destroy them.
Them, with performances as Grand Guignol ludicrous as Dickey's and Pill's, and as vexed by pain and punishment as Thomas' and Ayorinde's, leans too hard on scariness at the expense of what truths those scares are meant to show us.
The performances by the actors are stellar in every episode, especially Ayorinde, Thomas and Pill. Despite the interminable wait to exhale, you will love and hate on their characters long after it's finally over.
Among its many frustrating elements, it brings up larger questions as to when reflective trauma in horror simply becomes a part of the style, despite the grave emotional context.
Them is a series of beautifully visualised ugliness, which is engaging to watch but only in small doses -- not ideal in the era of binge-watching. But even The Handmaid's Tale allows its audience up for air.
It's hard not to notice that the show spends 10 episodes dragging out a nearly identical story to what Lovecraft [Country] efficiently told in one. And after a while, the new show's individual strengths crumble under the weight of its sheer size.
The series, created by Little Marvin, is most original when unpeeling the homeliest signifiers of Americana -- fruit pies have never looked so sinister.
Them leans more on race trauma than actual storytelling. It seems the creators aimed to upset the viewers so much with constant brutality that we wouldn't notice how hollow it all truly is.
