This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics.
Monsterland
1 season (so far), eight episodes
Annapurna Television, Two & Two Pictures
Hulu, 2020
Synopsis: (from the IMDb page) Encounters with Gothic beasts, including fallen angels and werewolves, broken people are driven to desperate acts in an attempt to repair their lives, ultimately showing there is a thin line between man and beast.
My Thoughts: Monsterland, an episodic anthology show with a horror bent, debuted on Hulu in October 2020. Based partially on Nathan Ballingrud’s fantastic short story collection North American Lake Monsters (reissued under the title Monsterland to coincide with the show), the show is more psychological horror than slasher flick or fantasy horror. Which isn’t a bad thing – but may surprise some viewers expecting more traditional horror from the series description.
Tonally, Monsterland feels like the horror equivalent of the few Black Mirror episodes I’ve seen. Episodes are claustrophobic and weather-beaten (in a good way to this viewer). Close-ups of characters, tight two-shots, and slightly-out-of-focus backgrounds in wider shots contribute to the claustrophobic “it’s just the viewer and the character” tone; for many of these episodes I really felt like I was in the room/environs with the characters. Regional climates saturate every episode: the humidity of Port Fourchon and New Orleans, the winter chill of Eugene Oregon and Newark New Jersey, the stark cold of backwoods Iron River Michigan, and the salt-air wet of Palacios Texas are as much as a character as the humans who populate the stories set there. Likewise, the man-made suburban false security of Plainfield Illinois and the tightly spaced urban modernity of New York, New York take a toll on the characters in those episodes.
Although the series is, as mentioned, nominally adapted from Nathan Ballingrud’s short stories, several episodes are original to the series. To help make them feel of a whole, episode titles are simply the city and state where the story takes place. This also contributes to the overall series concept that monsters can be found anywhere, from the rural to the urban.
And that’s really the thematic connective tissue of the series: that as much as it would be nice to think monsters are supernatural and fully evil, the truth is any one of us has the potential to be a monster to someone or something. People are selfish. People are manipulative. People make bad decisions which have greater impacts than they realize in the moment. Some of those decisions are made intentionally, some inadvertently. Some results are immediate, some take years to echo out. But ultimately, these are stories about how horrible people can be to each other and to the environment.
The “actual” monsters presented are often incidental – or at least are the inciting incident rather than the point of the episode. Meeting a shape-changing serial killer in Port Fourchon sets Toni on a path she can’t come back from; a demon in New Orleans forces Annie to see what she’s been hiding from herself for over a decade; a shadow-being exposes an already down-trodden teen in Eugene to the controlling vitriol of online conspiracy theorists; urban legends about haunted woods alter the life course of three teens in Iron River; fallen angel-like beings in Newark skirt the periphery of Brian and Amy’s personal tragedy . There are a few episodes where the supernatural element is more prevalent and central to the narrative, however: an encounter with a mermaid helps an injured Palacios fisherman reclaim his sense of self-worth, a religious epiphany emotionally and physically impregnates a New York oil executive, and a lesbian couple in Plainfield face a very real case of life-after-death.
There is a bit of lip-service paid to these episodes taking place in the same world: Kaitlyn Dever’s Toni appears in several episodes under different aliases, the oil spill at the heart of the New York episode is background to the Palacios Texas episode, and I think a couple of other background characters turn up or are mentioned more than once. It all felt a bit unnecessary. Anthology shows like this don’t really need to have recurring characters shuffling through the background except for the writers/directors to give a little wink-wink to the viewers. Had the recurring appearances of Toni led somewhere (perhaps in a potential season two?), I might have felt differently.
The performances of the leads in each episode are roundly excellent. Full credit to Kaitlyn Dever, Nicole Beharie, Kelly Marie Tran, Mike Cotton and Adepero Oduye, Trieu Tran, Taylor Schilling and Roberta Colindrez, Charlie Tahan and Ben Rappaport, Bill Camp and Michael Hsu Rosen. The supporting casts of each episode are also solid, but the intimate focus of each episode puts the burden of the story on the one or two leads, even in party scenes.
It should be noted that a few of these episodes touch heavily on topics that may be emotional triggers for people who have gone through similar struggles. I’m thinking in particular of the “Plainfield, Illinois” episode, which hinges heavily on a not-particularly nuanced portrayal of bipolar disorder and depression. It was a hard episode for me to watch, and I’m “only” depressed, not bipolar. Other episodes deal with child molestation, child abandonment, and child disappearances.
I don’t believe a second season pick-up has been announced, but I am hoping for more of Monsterland, including more direct adaptations of Ballingrud’s short stories.