TV Review: From Here to Haverhill NOS4A2's Premiere Is Slow Burn Horror

NOS4A2's Premiere Is Slow Burn Horror

A Decrepit Zachary Quinto and a Whole Lot of Driving Await Us

*minimal spoilers*

The vintage cars and vampires horror thriller penned by the inimitable Joe Hill, NOS4A2 cruised its way onto the screen Sunday night on AMC. Fronted by Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, American Horror Story) as the decrepit and cadaverous soul-sucking vampire Charlie Manx and Ashleigh Cummings (Westside) as Vic McQueen, the young woman with the powers to take him down, NOS4A2 promises to be a vampire show unlike any we’ve seen.

There are no convoluted love triangles, no forbidden supernatural romances and not a trace of the sparkling Ken doll bodies synonymous with some pop culture vamps. NOS4A2’s lead antagonist is all crypt keeper. He’s a deranged, depraved creature seemingly on the verge of a second death with one mission-- satisfying his appetite for eternal youth. Oh and kill people. Lots of people.

NOS4A2’s cold opening centers around the tropey, obligatory death by sex scene. A little boy named Danny (what else, lol) wakes up from a nightmare and begs to sleep in his mom’s room. Mom whose mom is the middle of banging her BF (rightfully) says no and Danny tearfully shuffles away ...until a chorus of “Oh Christmas Tree” summons him to his front door where a glossy black Rolls Royce idles on the street. The doors pop open to reveal a back seat jam-packed with piles of presents, and Danny boy is sold. Stranger danger be damned!

It’s only when he sees his mom run out of the house screaming, a man wielding a syringe hot on her heels that Danny realizes the perilous predicament he's in locked in the back seat of the car. But by then, it’s too late. Mom’s neck gets snapped, the killer calls shotgun and scoots into the passenger's side, and a darkly chuckling Manx rasps that the next stop is Christmasland were "every day is Christmas and unhappiness is against the law." Then, proceeds to drive. Drive. Drive. And drive some more.

Manx is the most striking part of the premiere. The makeup and prosthetics used to transform Quinto into the demented supernatural killer are awe-inspiring. Combined with his rasping, hungry voice and malice filled eyes Quinto is unrecognizable as Manx.  Unfortunately, Manx’s screen time is largely spent with him behind the wheel driving. Driving. Driving. Driving. And driving some more. While Danny sleeps in the back seat. And sleeps some more.

Many miles away, we find our lead hero, 18-year-old Vic McQueen in Haverhill, Massachusetts a town whose motto may as well be Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.

Vic is a disheveled, aspiring artist, whose parents marriage (both were very young when they had Vic) is on the verge of collapse. Her dad is a drunken fuckboy in the demolition field, her mom cleans houses for basic bougie bitches and they’re constantly at each other's throats.

Friendless, and stuck in a crappy neighborhood in a crappy town, Vic finds escape and solace only through her drawings and speeding off to the woodsy outskirts on her motorbike.

Curious, daring, and unwilling to settle into the miserable drudgery of her mom’s paycheck-to-paycheck life Vic is a compelling, instantly relatable character. Her androgynous look - grungy dark wash jeans, baggy, distressed band tees and a mess of brown curly hair- sets her apart from many female horror leads and grounds her even more firmly in reality.

One evening, a chance encounter with an artifact from the past changes everything.  Long thought to be destroyed, the eerie wooden covered bridge in the woods known as The Short Way awakens Vic’s uncanny gift. The teen has the ability to travel to other locations when she drives through the rickety bridge and can find lost items. Her preternatural seeking abilities put her on the radar of both the Here, Illinois based punk-rock librarian Maggie (Jahkara Smith), and Manx himself.   

We find another fascinating and exciting character in Maggie. The purple-haired, tattooed Maggie is a kind of modern-day seer and, is freaking awesome as hell. Armed with a bag of Scrabble tiles imbued with predictive capabilities (and F and U Scrabble tiles dangling from her ears) Maggie tasks herself with finding Daniel. YES. This badass babe has Scrabble tile divination abilities. (Dream. Super. Power.)

NOS4A2 takes a slow burn approach to its horror and nixes action for instead assembling the characters and introducing the world. Immersing us in Vic’s sleepy, slummy, New England town, and the Here, Iowa Illinois suburbs that are quaked by Danny’s disappearance. Dysfunctional family drama, the pressures of adolescence, and the need for human connection is the heartbeat of “The Shorter Way”.  And, um, driving around.

The pilot teasingly ends with Danny waking up as a wickedly grinning veiny demon child with needle-sharp teeth, Manx fresh-faced, young, and handsome again, and Vic suffering the consequences from (unknowingly) dabbling in the supernatural when she drove through the bridge. Her eye, grotesquely swollen, bloodshot, and oozing, and the piercing noise in her head is as nightmarish as Demon Danny.

While NOS4A2 dragged its feet in much of this setting-up-the-groundwork episode, it’s tantalizing enough to get me to tune into episode 2. Will Manx go after the little girl Vic babysits and spirit her off to Christmasland to get Vic in his clutches? Will Maggie and Vic meet if or when The Shorter Way connects to the Here library? Why does Manx want Vic anyway? And what does she do to get put on his naughty list? The potential here to flip the vampire script and deliver another angle of horror is here. But, there’s also a risk of predictability. Either way, I’m buckled up and ready to see what sets the two characters on a collision course… one that both of them may not survive.

Easter Egg Fun Fact: Some of the locations tucked into Manx’s magical Map Of the United Inscapes Of America are nods to some of Joe Hill's (and one of Stephen King's) and it’s kind of amazing-- Pennywise's Circus (It!), The Night Road (Heart-Shaped Box), The Treehouse of The Mind (Horns), and my personal favorite, Lovecraft Keyhole (from Hill’s graphic novel series Locke and Key)  

*Images from IMDB