"Tutorial" – Two Sentence Horror Story S01E06

Okay, that was decent. Actually, it was pretty good. I wouldn't say it was original or broke new ground in horror, But it did take advantage of the Internet to tell a story of a vlogger who does beauty tips on the dark web. Toss in a few decent directorial touches, some spooky music, and a story by C. S. McMullen that says something about modern-day Internet celebrity and video channels, and you've got the closest thing to a winner that Two Sentence Horror Story has produced so far.

"Tutorial" starts with vlogger Kerene (Aleyse Shannon) doing what appears to be makeup tips from her bedroom. The house is otherwise empty--we never find out anything about Kerene's family, or any hint that she has one--and the doorbell rings.

While Kerine answers it, and finds no one, a hoodie-ed figure slips in via the window and prowls around the house. Kerine goes back to her laptop and then hears strange noises. We see the intruder, Jason, talking to Shawn on the phone before he finds Shawn's corpse under Kerine's bed. Kerine' vlog soon takes a turn for the macabre (or more macabre) as she talks about how it's time for the hunt, grabs a hammer, chases down the intruder, knocks him out as he tries to escape, beats in the back of his skull, cuts strips off his chest, and talks to her audience about how to cure the skin.

Shawn wakes up, hits Kerene in the head with the hammer, and tries to escape. The "dead Shawn" emerges from under the bed, and presumably kills Jason. Then Shawn and Kerine go on camera together and Kerine thanks her boyfriend for his help before demonstrating her makeup for the week: a mask made out of Jason's skin.

There are several unanswered questions: How did Shawn lure Jason to the house? What does our "happy" couple do with the bodies? And as I noted above, where is Kerene's family? There is a "Darkweb" tag on the video, indicating that it's not going out for public consumption. The comments coming in for the video are also a bit off-kilter, and it soon becomes apparent that the vlog viewers are in on the fact that the whole thing is a setup by Kerene and Shawn to get some fresh human skin for Kerene's mask.

The last couple of minutes, with Kerene and Shawn dancing, and Shawn saying that he's going to soon do his own channel, are particularly chilling. You basically have two psychopaths that lure in humans and kill them to get skin for their darkweb mask-making tutorials. Ms. Shannon carries most of the episode, and does a good job of playing a woman who goes from innocent vlogger to psychopathic killer. And one wonders if there is a real-life darkweb video channel out there with instructions on how to make masks out of human skin.

Giullian Yao Gioiello as Shawn is pretty much of a non-presence, since he doesn't clearly appear until the last five minutes or so. Guillermo Arribas as Jason is pretty much the hapless victim. Like I said, one wonders how Shawn convinced Jason to go through with the whole prank: presumably Shawn claimed that they were going to prank Kerine and left Jason to believe things had gone horribly wrong. Which they did. For him.

It's hard to put a finger on what "clicked" for "Tutorial". Like I said, it's not great horror. But it feels like the creative team was actually trying to create something new and say something about modern celebrity-oriented Internet culture. Shields gives a good performance, and the episode is just long enough to establish the horror but short enough that we don't worry about the questions asked above.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?

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And yes, The CW cut back to only one new episode at 9/8 central. The episode at 9:30/8:30 was a repeat of "Legacy". Which doesn't bode well for Two Sentence Horror Story's future. Sad, really.