Don't get mad.
The Terror: Devil in Silver
The first episode is now streaming on AMC+ and Shudder. Subsequent episodes will debut every Thursday. I've seen all six episodes of the limited series.
Recently, I rewatched Steven Soderbergh's Unsane (2018), which revolves around a perfectly sane main character who is committed to a mental health facility for health insurance.
Of course, many movies and TV shows have featured a similar premise, which makes the first episode of The Terror: Devil in Silver feel uneasily familiar to a horror devotee. That unease becomes a knot in the stomach before the first episode concludes.
Pepper (Dan Stevens) appears to be an ordinary family man, with girlfriend Marisol and a young daughter. He's a drummer in a rock band that is always looking for more gigs, which makes Marisol anxious as the bills mount. One day, he lets his temper get the best of him when he sees Marisol's ex lay his hands on her; the police are called and lead him away in handcuffs.
Instead of taking him to a police station, though, the three plainclothed officers take him to New Hyde Hospital, a threadbare mental health facility, where he is reluctantly admitted by the threadbare staff and ushered into Hell. We know this because the very first scene of the episode showed two of the workers reacting with horror at the condition of a patient, who died under "mysterious circumstances" and/or committed suicide.
Furthering this horror, Pepper begins to see things in the ceiling of the admission office. Naturally, Pepper is placed in the dead patient's bed and given medication. Very quickly, however, we see that it's not just an insurance scam, and that it's not all a series of nightmares in Pepper's head.
Based on a same-titled novel by Victor LaValle, who also wrote The Changeling, which was adapted into a series by Kelly Marcel for Apple TV, Devil in Silver is billed as the third season of anthology series The Terror. The first two stand-alone seasons, which debuted in 2018 and 2019, were slow-burning and atmospheric shows that ran for ten episodes each, and thus could take their time in establishing their respective horrors.
Running just six episodes, The Terror: Devil in Silver gets to its point much more quickly, yet after effectively and spookily establishing the horrific atmosphere, in an episode helmed by great genre vet Karyn Kusama, the series goes places that are less frequently visited. Primarily this is through the characterizations of the patients, who are portrayed with recognizable degrees of authenticity, most notably by Judith Light and b, and the medical staff, extending from the facility head Aasif Mandvi to a doctor (Stephen Root) to the head nurse (CCH Pounder) and the other nurses.
Rather than portray the medical staff only as inhumane monsters, the show presents them in a more authoritative mode when dealing with the patients, and then reveals their own doubts and anxieties when speaking with their colleagues and bosses. This feels more authentic than usual with these types of fictional situations, where creators and writers tend to stick to one shade of grey for protagonists and another for antagonists.
Instead, it feels like most everyone -- administrators, doctors, nurses, patients, family members, police officers -- wants the best for those confined in the facility, which makes their actions in the face of greater dangers entirely reasonable and more greatly empathetic.
Under the guidance of showrunners Christopher Cantwell (Halt and Catch Fire) and Victor LaValle, the first two episodes are directed by Karyn Kusama and ace director of photography Julie Kirkwood, which naturally favors deep shadows and complementary darker colors, creating a palette that is followed in succeeding episodes by directors Emanuel Osei-Kuffour, Jr. and Craig William MacNeill, as well as dps Sarah Cawley and Patr Hlinomaz.
That makes the entire series feel like a whole, a deep, dense dive into empathetic mental health issues and fresh new nightmares, leading one to the inevitably two-part conclusion: Don't get mad. And trust new friends.
Now Streaming celebrates independent and international genre films and television shows that are newly available on legal streaming services.