‘Channel Zero’ Delivers High-Wire Thrills In A Decidedly Low-Tech Manner

Channel Zero is the kind of show that draws accolades like “the creepiest show you haven’t watched yet,” “the best horror show,” and “the best alternative to Stranger Things.” (If you’re already an avid Channel Zero fan, God bless you and please do not @ me.) But that’s because the concept — an anthology series based on creepypasta, short horror stories originating on internet forums — is a hard sell. Airing on SyFy, there are few, if any, big names in the cast. The pieces aren’t quite in place for it to acquire the word-of-mouth momentum a successful television show needs. People will keep writing those pieces year after year, though, because Channel Zero is undeniably great.

Creepypasta frequently present themselves as real events that happened to someone, playing off the found quality of internet archives and winding their way into your mind on the off-chance that maybe, just maybe, there are monsters in the world. More than any other show on television, Channel Zero manages to tap into that same vein — the creatures and scares it depicts probably aren’t real, but based on how effectively they manipulate our very real, human emotions, it’s hard to say for sure.

Each installment of Channel Zero so far has focused on one central, familial relationship. First season Candle Cove was about the sibling relationship between brothers Mike and Eddie Painter — Eddie had vanished during their childhood, and Mike’s reluctant return to his town sets the events of the season in motion. The second season, No-End House, explored Margot Sleator’s relationship with her father, John, who had died years earlier but returns — in some form — once she enters the titular no-end house. And the third season, Butcher’s Block, returns to a sibling dynamic, introducing sisters Alice and Zoe Woods who have moved to a new town in order to run away from their family’s history of mental health problems.

In each of these cases, Channel Zero manages to circle the ongoing psychic consequences of loss, poking at wounds long after they should have healed over into scars. But the fantastic, frequently grotesque imagery of the short stories provides welcome respite and additional layers to what would otherwise be a drudging family drama. In fact, the primary innovation of Channel Zero is to create situations where these people are brought — literally kicking and screaming — into contact with their lost loved ones. You would think it would hard to work through emotional pain when there are cackling puppet pirates, enormous teeth monsters, and a cannibal ghost family hanging around, but Channel Zero weaves them seamlessly together.

Compared to most of the popular genre shows at the moment—Stranger Things, Westworld, Black Mirror—Channel Zero is decidedly low-tech. The production value oozes off the screen, like a low-budget science fiction show from the early ’90s. That’s not a bad thing, though. Channel Zero manages to evoke the same quality as many of those shows, where the quality of the script and weirdly grounded, human insanity of the ideas was the thing that brought the show together, rather than some photogenic imagery. The star quality of the actors is lower. (When the first season debuted, the main joke about it was that it starred Mark Brendanawicz, the least-loved, oft-forgotten character from the first two seasons of Parks and Recreation.) This season, the biggest name is Rutger Hauer, who literally makes a meal out of his role as seemingly immortal monster Joseph Peach.

The images of Channel Zero can be disquieting because they are grotesque, and analog enough to suggest real malice and a physical presence on the part of its cannibal imps, pirate puppets, and identical, endless suburban houses. Few of these phenomena are given an explanation, and the resolution of each season is anything but happy. And throughout, Channel Zero maintains its scrupulous commitment to blending psychological trauma with violent physicality: In one scene of Butcher’s Block, Peach literally consumes a part of Zoe’s brain that he claims is linked to her incipient schizophrenia. There isn’t really a statement wrapped in the show’s treatment of mental health so much as there is a recognition that, sometimes, aspects of our lives can be too monstrous to fully grasp with the conscious mind. Eventually, we’re all reduced to just so much viscera.

Eric Thurm’s writing also appears in GQ, Esquire, Real Life, and eventually in a book about board games he is writing for the NYU Press and Los Angeles Review of Books. He is also the founder, producer, and host of Drunk Education, a comedic-academic event series that has absolutely nothing to do with TED.

Watch Channel Zero: Butcher's Block on SyFy