Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Paul Schneider, Fiona Shaw, Luisa D'Oliveira, Natalie Brown, Shaun Benson
Intro:
...one of the best examples of TV horror to come along in a good while...
A troubled child psychologist, Mike Painter (Paul Schneider), returns to his rural home town of Iron Hill after many years absence. Years ago, a serial killer stalked the town, murdering five children – including Mike’s own twin brother, Eddie. The murders, Mike is convinced, were mysteriously linked with the television show, Candle Cove, a half-forgotten children’s program in the Sid and Marty Krofft mould, featuring creepy pirate puppets and a vaguely unsettling plot revolving around a secret cave.
He may be onto something – mysterious doings are afoot in Iron Hill, and the local kids are saying Candle Cove is back on the air – even though adults can only see static on the screen. It isn’t long before the bodies start piling up and Mike must dig up the terrible secrets of the past in order to solve the horrifying, unfathomable events of the present.
Candle Cove began life as a creepypasta – a kind of internet ghost story that sits somewhere between urban legend and collaborative writing project – by Kris Straub. The Slenderman is probably the most famous of these, but there are countless examples, from the pedestrian to the truly unsettling, and a whole online subculture devoted to creating, partaking of, and disseminating them. Syfy apparently saw the value in this kind of free range IP, and has commissioned two seasons of television based on them, with Candle Cove being the first.
With its small town setting, its focus on the secret worlds and mythologies of children, and especially its temporally split storyline, which bounces back and forth between 1988 and the present day, Candle Cove owes a serious debt to Stephen King’s It. That’s only part of the mix, though, with the series at its most effective when it mines its add-a-word internet roots for chills and scares. Creepypastas are at their best and most disquieting when they hint at an underlying logic or system of causality at odds with the mundane and knowable world – the intrusion of the unnatural into the quotidian, the horror under the skin of the everyday. At its best, Candle Cove captures this ineffable quality to excellent effect.
It’s not afraid to go for the gore, either, with a number of bloody murders scattered through the season, but it’s the atmosphere that really stands out. Director Craig William Macneill (the criminally underseen The Boy) manages the pacing and growing sense of dread with admirable skill and (gradually lessening) restraint. There are, of course, stand out moments – a brutal killing in episode four comes to mind and, of course, the much-marketed creature made from teeth – but it’s the overall texture that works – the whole fabric, not any single thread woven through it.
Candle Cove stands in direct opposition to the histrionics of American Horror Story and the like; it’s a quiet, unsettling work that builds to a buzzing, static-hum crescendo in its final act. Honestly, it’s one of the best examples of TV horror to come along in a good while. Genre fans are in for a treat – phone off, lights out, watch it in the dark.
