Stream It Or Skip It: ‘All That We Destroy’ on Hulu, the Grim Story of a Serial Killer and His Faithful Mom

Mother’s Day was this past weekend, but in the new episode of Hulu and Blumhouse’s Into the Dark holiday-themed series, All That We Destroy explores the lengths that a mother will go to for, hopefully, the betterment of her son.

ALL THAT WE DESTROY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Gloop. A vat of tar-black gloop. And then, a face emerges from the opaque, glistening sludge. It’s a woman. She’s showered off, dressed and gussied up with a little eyeliner. Her name is Ashley (Aurora Perrineau). She wakes up. “Where am I?” she asks Spencer (Israel Broussard). “In my room,” he replies.

What’s going on here? Was she in a coma? Is she an android? Is this how the alien seduction-creatures from Under the Skin came to be? All That We Destroy teases its premise suspensefully, so I’ll tread carefully. Spencer, who looks to be 20ish, experiences some, shall we say, antisocial urges, in the sense that he likes to put his hands around necks and squeeze kinda hard. And then he likes to smash skulls on hard floors until blood comes out.

Thankfully, sweet little Spence’s mom, Victoria (Samantha Mathis), is a gifted geneticist whose lab/institute clones human organs. When she learns her poor boy is a little too kill-happy for his own good, she begins mixing motherly instinct into her clinical experiments. She jumps from lungs and kidneys to the whole shebang, cloning Ashley over and over again — in her sweet home laboratory, even! — attempting to study and cure his sociopathy. Besides the troubling moral implications and the disposal of all the Ashley bodies and the missing-persons reports for the original Ashley and the razor’s-edge potential to make Spencer even worse, what could possibly go wrong?

Complicating matters is Marissa (Dora Madison), the bubbly-sweet new neighbor who doesn’t suspect anything, until maybe she does. Marissa sees a shy, introverted Spencer who draws pretty pictures, not the cold, creepy Spencer who sketches Dead Ashleys. Did I mention Spencer has animal-bone taxidermy sculptures decorating his bedroom walls? You don’t need to be a horror-film historian to know taxidermy in set pieces is a bad sign.

So what happens next? Mum’s the word, of course.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: All That We Destroy adds a near-future sci-fi twist to the Psycho soup. Hitchcock’s all-time classic is the be-all, end-all of hyper-codependent mother-son stories, followed by Lynne Ramsay’s powerful Tilda Swinton vehicle We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Performance Worth Watching: Mathis is the film’s sturdy anchor, playing a woman following her maternal instincts so far out on a limb, it just has to break eventually. And deep down, she knows it.

Memorable Dialogue: “I like you! You’re weird!” Marissa chirps at Spencer, very clearly not knowing the half of it.

Single Best Shot: Ever have one of those days when you wake up and feel like you’ve spent an indeterminate amount of time in some gooey, black genetic ectoplasm? Yeah, me too.

Sex and Skin: Spencer strips the clones before he puts them in a composter that you only have if you’re a genius geneticist with a home laboratory outfitted with a tub of mysterious black goop.

Our Take: The premise is strong, and director Chelsea Stardust generates considerable suspense by nurturing a precariously fragile situation. The screenplay is fraught with subtext about the nature of evil, and whether it’s something that ever can be cured or managed. Plus, the gloop is as literal a depiction of existential muck as you’re ever likely to see in a movie.

Problem is, writers Sean Keller and Jim Agnew fumble the finale. It borders on nonsense, as characters abandon logic and become puppets of the plot. They also drop in numerous pointless scenes with Frank Whaley as Spencer’s father, who communicates with Victoria via goofy virtual-reality pseudo-Skype sessions — padding for a script begging for a rewrite.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Its thematic ambition has me on the cusp of recommending it. But you’re better off watching We Need to Talk About Kevin, which explores similar ideas in a much more focused, plausibly terrifying manner.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch All That We Destroy on Hulu