There’s never been a better time to watch scary shit on your TV. This year alone, TV horror junkies have been invited to binge-watch an anthology series about the horrors of technology, an anthology series about the presidential election, and an anthology series about the horrors of Neil Gaiman’s short stories.
And then there’s the Syfy series Channel Zero, which premieres its new season tonight, and which is a little harder to succinctly summarize. Unlike Black Mirror, Channel Zero tells stories over an entire season, not a single episode; unlike American Horror Story, each story relies on a totally different cast of actors, with no apparent connection between them. And each season of Channel Zero is based on a different "creepypasta"—internet slang for pieces of horror fiction that spread virally around the internet, the way an urban legend might.
The first season of Channel Zero—subtitled Candle Cove—followed a group of adults united by their shared childhood memories of a creepy (and apparently nonexistent) kid’s show, and a string of unsolved child murders that occurred around the same time. It was beautifully shot and as hypnotizing and inscrutable as a nightmare, packed with surreal imagery and a story that never quite added up. It also had a MONSTER MADE OF HUMAN TEETH:
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! But if you don’t want that dude popping up in your nightmares, good news: Season Two of Channel Zero—subtitled No-End House—is a hard reboot, jettisoning everything from Candle Cove but the high-end production values and the creeping sense of dread.
No-End House follows Margot Sleator (Amy Forsyth), a teenager dealing with the sudden death of her father by grinding out her days doing nothing in a small Minnesota suburb. When she reluctantly joins some old friends at a party, she hears about the No-End House—a legendary traveling haunted house comprised of six rooms, each scarier than the last. "Most people don’t even make it to the sixth room. And the people who do are never seen again," warns her friend. So of course these idiots head over to the No-End House to see what all the fuss is about. And as the each room get scarier—and more uncomfortably personal—Margot and her friends make it out of the house.
...OR DO THEY?
On the whole, Channel Zero: No-End House isn’t quite as successful as Channel Zero: Candle Cove. To be fair, Candle Cove also began with much stronger source material. Kris Straub's "Candle Cove" might be the platonic ideal of the creepypasta: brief, clever, and punchy, with a killer ending. By contrast, Brian Russell's "NoEnd House" creepypasta and its sequels are a mess: too long, clumsily written, and overly reliant on horror cliches like—ugh—a scary little girl.
So it’s probably for the best that Channel Zero: No-End House takes the core concept of the "NoEnd House" creepypasta and spins out its own original mythology: an elaborate parallel universe populated by predatory doppelgängers and their hapless victims—including some version of Margot’s late father John (John Carroll Lynch). John’s true nature remains an open question, but it’s clear that something very unnatural is happening—and while Margot is smart enough to understand that this will not end well, she also can’t quite resist the opportunity to quiz this version of her dad about all the things she never got to ask when he was alive.
I don’t want to spoil too much about No-End House, but I will say that the season squeezes in some truly remarkable creepy images. A garden hose spurting watery blood out of a crushed-in face. A full-length mirror at the end of a long hallway, with a giggling maniac tapping his fingers just behind it. A dismembered body piled up like kindling in a backyard fire pit. These are images that are designed to linger in the mind long after an episode ends.
And they do. Yes, there are a ton of horror anthology series out there right now—but Channel Zero remains my favorite for its "throw a bunch of scary shit at the wall and see what sticks" approach. It’s the closest a modern TV show has come to capturing the vibe of a grade-school sleepover, sticking a flashlight under your chin and improvising creepy stories to freak out your friends. Sure, not every detail is going to add up—but it’ll still leave you shivering.