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"Little Monsters" – Two Sentence Horror Stories S01E08

Stephen King meets urban horror meets Two Sentence Horror Stories. And so we get "Little Monsters".

Vegas Chiddick, Mikelle Wright-Matos, Melinda Mo, Two Sentence Horror Stories S01E08

There's nothing bad about "Little Monsters". But it's very... Stephen King-ish. The Stephen King who wrote It, which gave us Stranger Things. Where some children band together to fight an evil adults can't see, and preys, at least some of the time, on children. But since it's Two Sentence Horror Stories, and there's only thirty minutes minus commercials, we get three children: May (Melinda Mo), Khalil Williams (Mikelle Wright-Matos) and Marcus (Vegas Chiddick).

Children are going missing, and May is playing at a children's park. She sees a man in a black suit (John Speredakos), and he wags out a long black tongue at her before walking off whistling and shape-changing into an old woman. Again, since it's a thirty-minute episode, we only have one neighbor woman who shows up to not see the demon with its tongue sticking out.

May soon meets Khalil and Marcus, who are playing basketball. They quickly take in May as their friend and run her through some demon-fighting exercises. We get a kid-training montage and then Marcus gets taken by the demon. Fortunately, he has a tracking app on him. Khalil has May fill squirt guns and admits they don't know what will kill the demon so they'll try everything. Then the two kids follow Marcus to the suburban home where the demon resides in its old lady form. It keeps Marcus in the basement where the other children were stored before the demon ate them.

Prudence Wright-Holmes, Two Sentence Horror Stories S01E08

Marcus manages to escape the first room, but then the demon recaptures him. Khalil breaks into the house, and just as he's about to ram a stake through the demon, May pounds on the door. The demon answers the door and May asks why it eats children. It admits grownups are hard on its stomach and it likes playing with its food. Khalil stabs it in the back with the stake, and then all three kids go home.

For some reason, Marcus isn't with Khalil and May. They go to Khalil's apartment and Khalil's mother Tania (Anissa Felix) wants to know what's going on. The demon shows up looking like Tania because it can take specific forms as well as just shapeshift. Tania and the demon fight, and May shoves the unicorn doll she's been holding (and her dying mother blessed with "all of her love") into the demon's face. It crawls down the demon's throat, or it swallows the doll, or both, and the demon dies in a burst of green light.

At the end, the three kids are playing in a somewhat happier playground. They run off and a policeman whistling the same tune as the demon earlier watches them go. The end.

John Speredakos, Two Sentence Horror Stories S01E08

"Little Monsters" isn't a bad story. But if you're familiar with It and Stranger Things, it's not a new or innovative story, either. Nor does it add anything new to the mix. Creepy demon only kids can see as a demon kills kids. Kids fight back. Kids kill demon, but demon isn't really gone. We get the aforementioned training montage, and some scenes of the old lady demon at home preparing to cook Marcus. So presumably writer Vera Miao saw Tales From the Darkside: The Movie, too.

The kid performances are good, John Speredakos (and later Prudence Wright-Holmes) as the demon are good. The whole story just feels... old-hat. It suffers from the same problem several of the earlier episodes suffered: the creative team acts like they've just discovered horror and act like nothing like anthology horror has never been done on TV before. Except... it has. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it in mediocre style.

Either that, or the creative team thought it was a good idea to "mimic" It and Stranger Things. Except do it in a single-episode 30-minute format. It wasn't a good idea. At least some of the more recent episodes (like "Tutorial", a repeat of which followed "Little Monsters" tonight, but also "Hide") seemed to try and do something new and take advantage of aspects of modern-day life, with the darkweb and nihilistic teenagers and immigrant nannies.

Anissa Felix, Two Sentence Horror Stories S01E08

"Little Monsters" doesn't bring anything new to the table. Missing kids in a city project, and something supernatural is responsible. Given that, it's a pretty shallow story. We never find out anything about the demon or Khalil. May's mother is dead, and her blessed kiss of love proves the demon's downfall. So much for May's backstory. And there's nothing about one-parent children suffering the other parent's loss, or how they might bond over it, or much of anything. It's all just a very upfront story. The actors do what they can with it, but there's just not much there. The stories don't capture the imagination, making it far less than must-see-TV.

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

Written by Gislef on Sep 13, 2019

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