This article contains relatively major spoilers for all seasons of 'Channel Zero'.
Nick Acosta’s Channel Zero is a show with so much to offer. At its highest points, it's the scariest thing on television, probably by a long shot. It can be so adept at its get-under-your-skin-and-make-it-crawl approach so as to rival the most unsettling sequences in popular horror media.
But then it goes off the rails. Off the deep end. It takes things too far, and instead of going lovably bonkers, it just gets boring. This is not an isolated occurrence — I'd argue that it's happened, to an extent, in every season of this underappreciated SyFy anthology series, each incarnation of which adapts a different creepypasta story from the dark corners of the web.
In the first season, Candle Cove, a blood-curdling opening scene gives way to a genuinely chilling mystery surrounding a shady children's TV show and a creepy, clicky, child-snatching tooth monster... and then the tooth monster ends up getting humanized, the mystery gives way to suspense-less suspense, and all of the show's technical artistry cannot save an uncompelling narrative in its latter half.
The second season, No-End House is really never all that scary, save for a couple of scenes. It's a psychological drama and a phantasmagoric, metaphysical thriller. This season, as a holistic unit, happens to be the best of the bunch, which is surprising given that it's largely bereft of the squeal-worthy moments that are its brethren’s peaks.
Season 3, Butcher’s Block takes one of the most uncannily, incomprehensibly creepy — in that indescribable, cosmic-yet-mundane way — concepts in all of creepypasta, lonely staircases to nowhere, and almost immediately churns it through the meat-grinder (both literally and figuratively) by fusing it with an absolutely ridiculous story about a cannibal ghost family that sends its ugly gnome minions to snatch local children who they must sacrifice in payment to a demon god who is effectively the leaser of their posthumous home (credit this season with at least being self-aware, as the demonic presence is, at one point, actually referred to as a landlord). It's definitely the most off-the-wall, bat-shit insane of the seasons and actually benefits from that to an extent, but by the time the first five minutes of the show have passed and the ethereal stairway has lost most of its eerie splendor, it's tough to shake the feeling that a pulpy, disposable plot like this one need not keep sucking up your time by the hour given that it was probably better suited for the short-film treatment instead of the miniseries one, but you keep watching nonetheless because every once in a blue moon, an absolutely brilliant moment lumbers on-screen like a drunk, twisted Renaissance painting that had trouble finding its way home. The prime example of this is a moment when the physical embodiment of the protagonist's schizophrenia spider-walk chases her down a spiral staircase while the camera watches ominously from above. Shivers.
And then there's The Dream Door, season 4, the most recent of the bunch. It flexes all of the technical majesty of the preceding seasons, and it starts out so damn promising (like Channel Zero always does) so as to instill some hope that maybe, just maybe, this season will be different. Basement-dwelling Pretzel Jack is amazingly, memorably, Jesus-fucking-Christ-fuck-you-Nick-Acosta-for-ever-showing-me-that, horrifying. His introduction sparks a sustained burst of terror-fueled adrenaline the likes of which even the smartest, most anti-jump-scare horror rarely manages to evoke. His next few appearances throughout episodes 1 and 2 are so gloriously messed up and so wonderfully integrated into the mystery surrounding the protagonist's childhood trauma that a viewer (read: me) might be forgiven for thinking that the sort of disgusting panache that makes his initial handful of appearances so shocking, scary and unforgettable could sustain Jack’s effectiveness as an antagonist throughout the season's entire six-episode duration.
And then, like so many times before, Channel Zero shoves its monster into the light. When you do that to a monster, it isn’t scary anymore.
I'm not talking about literally thrusting the bad guy into a spotlight — it's difficult and easily botched (Bryan Bertino’s The Monster), but by no means impossible (David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive), to make a threat scary when it's seen visually, and that's a feat that Channel Zero has actually accomplished in the past (the tooth man upon his introduction, the schizophrenia monster always, and Pretzel Jack himself through roughly two episodes of The Dream Door).
But no, rather than a visual light, I'm talking about dragging the monsters — which can range from houses to television shows to staircases to doors to contortionist clowns — into the narrative spotlight: disposing of their incomprehensible uncanniness by invoking metaphysical (Dream Door), psychological (Candle Cove, No-End House), and/or fantastical (Butcher's Block) explanations. Because when you do that, the threat just isn’t scary anymore. Urgent, sure. Frightening? Provocative? Stick-with-you-at-night-and-fuck-with-your-dreams freaky? Nah.
I'm not frightened by the appearance of Pretzel Jack now that he's been explained as the embodiment of what is basically the protagonist's superpower, which initially-nice-but-soon-creepy-neighbor Ian promises to help her refine in a goofy, "Let me teach you how to use your abilities" way that is far more Kenobian than spooky.
I wasn't freaked out by Candle Cove’s tooth man once I learned he was Paul Schneider's brother.
I was never too afraid of the No-End House protagonist’s mental projection of her dead father, but the psychological drama in that season was often enough to compensate.
And schizophrenia monster — well, that shit was scary through the end, but it was just a small cog in a much larger spectral-cannibal story that, while in some ways lovably bonkers, long outstayed its welcome.
So, what exactly is Channel Zero doing wrong? Well, to put it simply, it's too long. Six episodes to a season might be a mercifully short order for another series, but each season of Channel Zero is based on a relatively short creepypasta story. And while Nick Acosta and his creative team have proved devilishly capable of bringing the nightmarish visions of the internet's usually-anonymous folktale authors to vivid, visceral, thoroughly horrifying light, they aren't quite so capable when it comes to converting these brief exercises in that aforementioned brand of uncanny, incomprehensible, anonymously-distributed horror into compelling narrative experiences. The adapters nail the beginning, the setup, the creepypasta-inspired part. And then they succumb, again and again, to the trappings of lower-quality television: bland interpersonal drama, quests to kill the monsters once and for all, acceptance of psychological issues that just don't belong to compelling-enough characters to care much about (again, with the exception of No-End House's affecting central father-daughter thread).
There's a lot of potential in every season of Channel Zero, and one could argue that the show is actually realizing that potential — so long as you only watch the first couple episodes of every season. But that inevitably ends up feeling like an incomplete experience, because the show's writers have insisted, time and again, on stretching these horrifying vignettes into full-fledged dramatic endeavors. So far, it's one hit and three strikes for this series on the narrative front. So, Acosta: either shorten your seasons, or overhaul your writer’s room without totally overhauling your beautifully demented vision.
All of this talk might make it sound like I don't like Channel Zero, and that's not the case. I actually really like the show. I think it's one of television's hidden gems, because it's truly going places that no other show on TV is willing to go. I'm going to keep watching it, because when Channel Zero hits, it hits hard, fast, and scary as all hell. I'm just annoyed with the show, because in its quest to take televisual horror to new, surreally disturbing heights, it has a tendency to fall down a regressive, melodramatic rabbit-hole, instead of sticking with the no-frills roots that make its concepts so inarticulately scary in the first place.
Nick Acosta’s Channel Zero is a show with so much to offer. At its highest points, it's the scariest thing on television, probably by a long shot. It can be so adept at its get-under-your-skin-and-make-it-crawl approach so as to rival the most unsettling sequences in popular horror media.
But then it goes off the rails. Off the deep end. It takes things too far, and instead of going lovably bonkers, it just gets boring. This is not an isolated occurrence — I'd argue that it's happened, to an extent, in every season of this underappreciated SyFy anthology series, each incarnation of which adapts a different creepypasta story from the dark corners of the web.
In the first season, Candle Cove, a blood-curdling opening scene gives way to a genuinely chilling mystery surrounding a shady children's TV show and a creepy, clicky, child-snatching tooth monster... and then the tooth monster ends up getting humanized, the mystery gives way to suspense-less suspense, and all of the show's technical artistry cannot save an uncompelling narrative in its latter half.
The second season, No-End House is really never all that scary, save for a couple of scenes. It's a psychological drama and a phantasmagoric, metaphysical thriller. This season, as a holistic unit, happens to be the best of the bunch, which is surprising given that it's largely bereft of the squeal-worthy moments that are its brethren’s peaks.
Season 3, Butcher’s Block takes one of the most uncannily, incomprehensibly creepy — in that indescribable, cosmic-yet-mundane way — concepts in all of creepypasta, lonely staircases to nowhere, and almost immediately churns it through the meat-grinder (both literally and figuratively) by fusing it with an absolutely ridiculous story about a cannibal ghost family that sends its ugly gnome minions to snatch local children who they must sacrifice in payment to a demon god who is effectively the leaser of their posthumous home (credit this season with at least being self-aware, as the demonic presence is, at one point, actually referred to as a landlord). It's definitely the most off-the-wall, bat-shit insane of the seasons and actually benefits from that to an extent, but by the time the first five minutes of the show have passed and the ethereal stairway has lost most of its eerie splendor, it's tough to shake the feeling that a pulpy, disposable plot like this one need not keep sucking up your time by the hour given that it was probably better suited for the short-film treatment instead of the miniseries one, but you keep watching nonetheless because every once in a blue moon, an absolutely brilliant moment lumbers on-screen like a drunk, twisted Renaissance painting that had trouble finding its way home. The prime example of this is a moment when the physical embodiment of the protagonist's schizophrenia spider-walk chases her down a spiral staircase while the camera watches ominously from above. Shivers.
And then there's The Dream Door, season 4, the most recent of the bunch. It flexes all of the technical majesty of the preceding seasons, and it starts out so damn promising (like Channel Zero always does) so as to instill some hope that maybe, just maybe, this season will be different. Basement-dwelling Pretzel Jack is amazingly, memorably, Jesus-fucking-Christ-fuck-you-Nick-Acosta-for-ever-showing-me-that, horrifying. His introduction sparks a sustained burst of terror-fueled adrenaline the likes of which even the smartest, most anti-jump-scare horror rarely manages to evoke. His next few appearances throughout episodes 1 and 2 are so gloriously messed up and so wonderfully integrated into the mystery surrounding the protagonist's childhood trauma that a viewer (read: me) might be forgiven for thinking that the sort of disgusting panache that makes his initial handful of appearances so shocking, scary and unforgettable could sustain Jack’s effectiveness as an antagonist throughout the season's entire six-episode duration.
And then, like so many times before, Channel Zero shoves its monster into the light. When you do that to a monster, it isn’t scary anymore.
I'm not talking about literally thrusting the bad guy into a spotlight — it's difficult and easily botched (Bryan Bertino’s The Monster), but by no means impossible (David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive), to make a threat scary when it's seen visually, and that's a feat that Channel Zero has actually accomplished in the past (the tooth man upon his introduction, the schizophrenia monster always, and Pretzel Jack himself through roughly two episodes of The Dream Door).
But no, rather than a visual light, I'm talking about dragging the monsters — which can range from houses to television shows to staircases to doors to contortionist clowns — into the narrative spotlight: disposing of their incomprehensible uncanniness by invoking metaphysical (Dream Door), psychological (Candle Cove, No-End House), and/or fantastical (Butcher's Block) explanations. Because when you do that, the threat just isn’t scary anymore. Urgent, sure. Frightening? Provocative? Stick-with-you-at-night-and-fuck-with-your-dreams freaky? Nah.
I'm not frightened by the appearance of Pretzel Jack now that he's been explained as the embodiment of what is basically the protagonist's superpower, which initially-nice-but-soon-creepy-neighbor Ian promises to help her refine in a goofy, "Let me teach you how to use your abilities" way that is far more Kenobian than spooky.
I wasn't freaked out by Candle Cove’s tooth man once I learned he was Paul Schneider's brother.
I was never too afraid of the No-End House protagonist’s mental projection of her dead father, but the psychological drama in that season was often enough to compensate.
And schizophrenia monster — well, that shit was scary through the end, but it was just a small cog in a much larger spectral-cannibal story that, while in some ways lovably bonkers, long outstayed its welcome.
So, what exactly is Channel Zero doing wrong? Well, to put it simply, it's too long. Six episodes to a season might be a mercifully short order for another series, but each season of Channel Zero is based on a relatively short creepypasta story. And while Nick Acosta and his creative team have proved devilishly capable of bringing the nightmarish visions of the internet's usually-anonymous folktale authors to vivid, visceral, thoroughly horrifying light, they aren't quite so capable when it comes to converting these brief exercises in that aforementioned brand of uncanny, incomprehensible, anonymously-distributed horror into compelling narrative experiences. The adapters nail the beginning, the setup, the creepypasta-inspired part. And then they succumb, again and again, to the trappings of lower-quality television: bland interpersonal drama, quests to kill the monsters once and for all, acceptance of psychological issues that just don't belong to compelling-enough characters to care much about (again, with the exception of No-End House's affecting central father-daughter thread).
There's a lot of potential in every season of Channel Zero, and one could argue that the show is actually realizing that potential — so long as you only watch the first couple episodes of every season. But that inevitably ends up feeling like an incomplete experience, because the show's writers have insisted, time and again, on stretching these horrifying vignettes into full-fledged dramatic endeavors. So far, it's one hit and three strikes for this series on the narrative front. So, Acosta: either shorten your seasons, or overhaul your writer’s room without totally overhauling your beautifully demented vision.
All of this talk might make it sound like I don't like Channel Zero, and that's not the case. I actually really like the show. I think it's one of television's hidden gems, because it's truly going places that no other show on TV is willing to go. I'm going to keep watching it, because when Channel Zero hits, it hits hard, fast, and scary as all hell. I'm just annoyed with the show, because in its quest to take televisual horror to new, surreally disturbing heights, it has a tendency to fall down a regressive, melodramatic rabbit-hole, instead of sticking with the no-frills roots that make its concepts so inarticulately scary in the first place.
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