Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Super Specs

The Tale of the Super Specs is the first story narrated by Gary (Ross Hull), the leader of The Midnight Society. I honestly went into this episode roughly remembering the story, and expecting it to be more mediocre. Instead, this episode is outright horrifying, taking a pair of joke shop glasses, and using them to present a frightening scenario.

I like Gary a lot as a character. Before the story starts we’re shown him with Kristen (Rachel Blanchard) in his father’s magic shop. In the shop Gary picks up a pair of glasses like the ones in the story before going to the meeting. This gives us the impression that Gary may have made up this entire story on the fly, making him the definitive story-telling ace of a group that in other episodes discusses working on stories for extended periods of time.

This episode introduces us to the show’s second recurring character, Sardo (Richard Dumont), a magic store owner who somehow manages to constantly sell protagonists real, and very dangerous magic, which even he thinks is fake. As with Vink, Sardo was never intended to recur, and the episode ends with him trapped in limbo, so I can only assume later appearances take place in alternate universes.

The episode follows a boy named Weeds (Eugene Byrd) and his girlfriend Marybeth (Graidhne Lelieveld-Amiro), who come into Sardo’s shop, and buy dust made from monkey bones, and a pair of the glasses. The glasses themselves appear to be inert on their own, but playing around Weeds throws some of the dust on the glasses, enchanting them.

While it’s never really commented on, it bears noting that Weeds is black, Marybeth is white, and they are explicitly stated to be a couple multiple times, even though it’s not necessary for the story. Yay for progressive children’s media! They have good chemistry as a bickering couple.

Weeds is a prankster, but is portrayed positively for it. Marybeth, on the other hand, is the voice of reason. When she begins putting on the specs and seeing people veiled in all black, Weeds assumes it’s an April Fools joke. However, Marybeth continues to see strange things, and even subtle changes to the environment through the glasses (a kettle on the stove visible only through the glasses, and a fire in the fireplace). It’s tense.

And when she tries to get rid of the glasses they, predictably, reappear in her bag.

Weeds, meanwhile, plays pranks, and messes around with the dust, eventually assuming it doesn’t work because he’s turned the wrong way to see it’s effect.

Going to Sardo, Marybeth is told that she and Weeds have somehow opened a door to another dimension, and the two realities are fighting to exist (an explanation Sardo clearly makes up, but is proven to be correct). Getting the monkey dust back from Weeds just before he flushes it as useless, she forces her boyfriend to sit through a ritual with Sardo to close the door. We get creepy imagery, and a bunch of people in veils.

When Sardo attempts to finally seal the doorway, a woman’s voice loudly announces that two universes cannot co-exist, and we cut to a reality where the two leads are replaced by different actors (Paul Frappier and Tarah Anick). Then, the veiled woman (Rachelle Glait) reveals herself, and explains to the two that they’d opened a door to another universe, but she’d sealed it away to save theirs. We then see our three leads in a crystal ball, screaming.

I’m a bit confused by why the ending seems to imply that the woman in black was a villain, if she was saving her own universe, but her voice goes low-pitched so she’s evil. Also, no one but her seems to veil themselves in the alternate universe, so I’m not sure who the other figures were. Still, kind of a minor criticism.

We close out on Gary pranking the group by giving them specs, and having a veiled David (Nathaniel Moreau) step in front of them. The logistics of this prank I don’t understand, but they needed a closing.

When people say horror should focus on scary ideas over gore, this is what they mean.

Nothing Today

If anyone is actually following my reviews, this is an fyi. I think I've lost more and more interest in this blog over the past few months, hence the lack of a Christmas post. Posts are automated through March already, I have some others I need to edit, I have two more episodes if Nightmares and Dreamscapes to review, and I may return some day when I've finished school.

But, I expect this blog will be on hiatus by the end of 2018.

Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Hungry Hounds

I’m not sure how much I should comment on the Early Installment Weirdness of Are You Afraid of the Dark.  It’s been many years since I saw this show, and this is my first time seeing the episodes in order, so I’m not sure if I can trust my memory.  That said, these early episodes put a lot more emphasis on the Midnight Society themselves than I remember.  This time we have Kristen (Rachel Blanchard) bringing a dog named Elvis to the Midnight Society.  She explains he’s there to provide “sound effects” for her story.

I think when I do the second season, I’ll want to review my opinions of the first, to see how the different story-tellers wove their tales.  As with the last story, we get a literary reference that our young story-teller surely feels smart remembering from class.  However, this time it’s only a short reference to Hamlet.

Most the story feels very much like a play, making me suspect that Kristen may be a drama nerd drawing inspiration from theatrical performances.  For much of the story we have two characters, who go from one set piece to the next while talking.  This works well, allowing the show to give us a creepy, yet minimalist experience.

It’s a bit hard to say who our protagonist is.  Mia Kirshner plays Pam, a girl who wants to learn to ride horses, as well as her deceased aunt who possesses Pam for much of the episode.  However, with Pam being out of commission for so long, her sister Amy (Jennifer Gula) ends up as our sympathetic character for much of the episode.

The episode doesn’t really dwell on the fate of Aunt Dora, but from implication I can gather this: Dora was an avid rider.  One day, when she was supposed to feed the farm’s hounds, she died in a riding related accident.  Because she was unable to feed the hounds, and no one found out about her death until it was too late, the starving animals attacked their elderly stable hand Giles (David Francis), causing him to have a fatal heart attack (apparently just outright having a man killed by hungry dogs is too much for a kids’ show, but that hardly detracts from the story).

Later, Pam and Amy are playing with a talking board, and are led to a box of Dora’s possessions.  Pam puts on Dora’s coat, and becomes possessed, leading Amy on a walk around the property, telling her about a fox she calls Mon Petit Rouge, and eventually encountering the furious ghost of Giles.  Dora then heads to the barn to feed the now-howling ghost dogs, but for some reason wants to open the door before getting the kibble.  This leads to a bizarre scene where Amy must hold Dora back from the door while Amy gets the food, even though Dora herself told Amy where the kibble was located.

The ending makes no sense at all, as the ghost-hounds trapped in the barn run past both Dora/Pam and the kibble to attack Amy, but for some reason Mon Petit Rouge shows up and they’re lured away, despite still having eaten nothing.  We’re even told in the closing narration that Dora is no longer tormented by the sound of the starving hounds, which I suppose might mean they ate Mon Petit Rouge.

...and then, they’re back in the attic, with the coat apparently having no effect on Pam.  The only indication that anything strange at all happened was the sudden appearance of kibble in Amy’s pocket. And in the closing, we’re told that Amy’s mother finally agreed to let her learn to ride, presumably because she could now sense that her sister’s spirit was at peace…or something…

It probably sounds like I’m bashing this episode, but far from it.  It makes about as much sense as you’d expect from an unedited story by a girl in her early teens, and as always, the atmosphere is awesome relative to the budget.  I even love that they were able to sneak in a reference to the girls being a “twinkle in (their parents’) eye,” something that I imagine would have been far too close to sexual for Goosebumps.

So, yeah, like every episode of this show so far, check it out.

Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Twisted Claw

The Tale of the Twisted Claw was originally shot to be the pilot episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark?  When the show was picked up, it was changed to the fourth episode to explain Frank’s (Jason Alisharan) presence after his introduction in the new pilot.  It seems a bit out-of-place here, as we now end up with two consecutive stories from David (Nathaniel Moreau).

That said, however, the placement still makes a degree of sense as David was evidently not the intended storyteller of the episode.  We open on a story by Eric (Jacob Tierney), which he abruptly cuts off mid-scare to leave as a cliff-hanger, even admitting outright that he has no idea where the story is going.  The other members of the Midnight Society are disappointed that they can’t get a full story, so David volunteers to fill in for the night with a story he’s been working on.

The story we get is The Monkey’s Paw for kids.  Quite frankly, it’s probably the best adaptation of the story you could hope for, targeted at an audience who are probably just a few years away from being assigned the story in school.  This means that, while the episode goes for a far more overtly supernatural route than the original, it’s still free to carbon-copy the climax.

This is yet another time when the frame story helps the narrative a lot.  When I was younger and telling ghost stories with the other Cub Scouts I do remember one boy who blatantly retold the story of Tailypo, using more contemporary language. Here, we change the setting and age of the characters, but in a way clearly designed to make it more relatable to its new audience.  So, it does feel very much like something that a creative child might come up with after reading The Monkey’s Paw for class.

The story this time follows two kids named Dougie (Noah Plener) and Kevin (Maxwell Medeiros) who play pranks on “Mischief Night,” the night before Halloween.  As a show of bravado, the two decide to prank Miss Clove (Ann Page), an old woman who everyone in town believes is a witch.  The prank results in a broken vase, and the two run off.

This scene establishes Miss Clove as a character and very much makes me wish she’d been one of the recurring roles on the show.  Rather than acting distraught, she laughs as the two run off.  It isn’t even an especially evil laugh.  It’s the laugh of someone who appreciates pranks, and is now preparing to get the two back.

Starting the night before Halloween was a smart move, because it allows a break in the action without making the night seem absurdly stretched out.  Unfortunately, the story takes up a total of three nights, making the decision a bit under-utilized.  After the prank, we cut to the next night, and the two make their rounds looking for candy.  They decide to go to Miss Clove’s door, assuming she won’t recognize them in their costumes when she only saw them for a moment the night before.

Miss Clove, obviously aware of who they are, decides to “reward” the two with the charmed wooden claw of a vulture, which she says is charmed to give them each three wishes.  The look on her face is priceless, as we can tell that she’s just barely containing her laughter at her own joke.  She even says “be careful what you wish for!  You just might get it!”  Honestly, this mixture of the old witch and the clever trickster is a hybrid archetype I’ve never quite seen before, and would love to see again.

The inclusion of a total of six wishes gives a lot more ability to build up to the climax.  However, in the story as it’s told only five are used, so either the writers cut one out, or Miss Clove was giving the kids an extra wish as a safety net in case they really screwed up.  It does add a bit of extra tension to the climax, as both boys still have one final wish left.

Dougie’s first wish is for their Trick-r-treating to be over so they can go home.  They find themselves assaulted by masked punks who take their candy…and they do indeed return home.  Kevin then wishes to beat his rival (Jason Tremblay) in a race at school, and a dog runs onto the track and trips the rival.

That night, Dougie’s parents (Paul Stewart and Linda Smith) are off to a restaurant, and the two begin to fight over the use of the claw.  It’s at this point that the episode gets dark fast.  Kevin angrily says that he wishes Kevin would “lose his folks,” and they get a phone call telling them that the two had been in a car accident and were being rushed to a hospital.  Dougie, in a panic, says he wishes his deceased grandfather was there, and the two see a car outside that looks like his grandfather’s, and there’s a knock at the door (as I said, a carbon-copy).

Kevin, afraid that Dougie’s grandfather will be a skeleton or a corpse, tries to use his final wish.  Realizing that Kevin was not responsible or rational enough to fix the problem, Dougie tries to stop him, and a fight breaks out as the knocking continues.  Finally, Dougie secures the claw, and wishes that they had never broken the vase.

The results are subtler than most reset buttons.  The door opens to reveal…Dougie’s parents, unharmed, who say they left their keys.  Kevin no longer has the metal from the race.  Outside, the unbroken vase is sitting on their porch, with a note that says “Trick ‘R Treat.”  We all realize that the old lady got exactly what she wanted: a good joke.

This is, honestly, a show that keeps exceeding my every expectation.  This episode is about as close to perfect as I can imagine this show getting.  Yes, I could sit and nit-pick minor things, like the decision to spread the story over three nights instead of two, but what’s that matter ultimately?  The boys provide a good Yin and Yang of the irresponsible Kevin, and the very marginally more responsible Dougie.  Like I said, I don’t know how the show can get better, but I hope it proves me wrong.