And so the anthology series Two Minute Horror Stories ends its season (and its series run?) with three whimpers rather than three bangs. Presumably to end the series on-time, whatever The CW considers "on-time", the network aired the show as a single 60-minute episode with three "normal" half hour episodes crammed in. Some editing of scenes to get the episodes down from 30 minutes to 20 minutes was probably involved.
It's hard to rate an episode like "Trilogy", made up of three separate and unrelated stories. Do you rate it based on the best of the three, or the worst of the three, or do you "average" your rating? Fortunately, I'm not here to rate the episodes but review them. And I get a few thousand words to indicate which story I'm reviewing. So on we go.
"Ma" is probably the best of the three stories. Director (and writer, and series creator, and probably coffee maker and waste disposal manager) Vera Miao films the episode in a small antiseptically-lit apartment, with a few brighter bursts of color to indicate the lead character Mona's (Mardy Ma) life outside of her domineering mother, Ma. Mona spends her time eating with her mother, watching Chinese historical soap operas, and painting her mother's toenails.
Mona's only escape is listening to music from a neighboring apartment, pressing her ear up to the wall. She eventually meets her new neighbor, Erica (Ayesha Harris). Since it's 2019 and The CW, and Two Minute Horror Stories, we soon find out Erica is a lesbian. Mona also reveals that she's has telekinetic powers.
Mona falls in love with Erica and they share a kiss. Later, Mona dresses up for a rooftop picnic with Erica. Ma objects, alternately cursing Mona as a "stupid girl", and threatening to kill herself, and blaming Mona for her husband leaving.
The next morning, Erica comes down from the roof and finds Mona's apartment door opens. She goes in and finds the place torn up. Mona is holding her mother's corpse suspended in the air, yelling at her. When Erica makes a noise, Mona instinctively TKs a knife into her chest. The last scene is Mona eating supper with the corpses of Ma and Erica.
Even if "Ma" is a bit of a rehash of Stephen King's Carrie, it's still an effective little story. Mona is a sympathetic character, and we feel for her because she's given a brief glimpse of a world and a life outside of her apartment. Wei-Yi Lin is effective as the domineering mother who has been forced to live with someone who she considers a "monsters". Ma rambles through dialogues about how she hopes Mona remembering her will keep her alive, and also manages to convey the fact she's basically given up her own life to take care of a daughter who can't survive in the real world without killing someone.
"Guilt Trip" is a non-supernatural horror story. A young woman, Michelle (Hannah Barlow), sees a black man Jason Miller (Gentry White) being beaten up by cops. Later she picks him up and admits she feels guilty about not helping him earlier. Jason acts weird and when they stop for gas, Michelle drives away when Jason goes inside. Somehow Jason catches up to her at a diner and threatens her, and Michelle convinces the cook to drive Jason off.
Throughout all this, we hear radio reports about a missing college girl. The diner waitress comments Michelle looks like the missing girl. Which is all the explanation we get for what follows.
Jason somehow steals a truck and runs Michelle off the road. While she recovers in the front seat, he finds a backpack in the back seat and the missing girl's corpse in the trunk. Michelle emerges, draws a gun on him, says it's better this way, and shoots Jason in the head. The next morning, we get a radio report about how Jason was found dead, apparently having killed himself, in the car of the missing girl and he's apparently the murderer.
"Guilt Trip" is short, sweet, and gets to the point. It portrays racism, both with white girl Michelle's nervous reaction to Jason and the cook's more blatant racism. Jason himself starts off acting kind of weird, but later tries to appeal to Michelle saying he has a daughter. The radio report at the end says Jason has a conviction for grand theft auto, which I suppose explains how he stole the truck.
That's the kind of subtlety that fills the episode. The radio broadcasts about the missing college girl play in the background and you can just make them out. It's implied Michelle killed the girl because of their shared resemblance, but nobody stops to explain that. How Jason keeps finding Michelle isn't explained, and seems more like a blatant attempts to turn him into a "teleporting threatening figure" beloved of slasher movies everywhere. So A for the subtlety and social commentary, C for the seemingly unstoppable Jason and the fact he acts somewhat oddly. At one point he tells Michelle he's just playing with her when he comments about a white woman picking up a black man. It seems very awkward for him to do so with a woman who is giving him a lift.
"Guilt Trip" isn't a great episode, but it's a good one. Which has been the problem with Two Sentence Horror Stories in general. The show has never quite risen out of mediocrity, although sometimes it shows glimpses.
"Singularity" is a hot mess of a story and doesn't offer any glimpses of something better. It features transgender actor/actress Jen Richards as Nala, a transgender biohacker who inserts a wifi antenna into her arm. Is there a thing about computer types being transgender? Nomi on Sense8 was transgender as well, and she was a hacktivist.
Nala being transgender has nothing to do with the story or the character. We only find out about it because two brief mentions of growing up trans and her "transition" by her friend George (Bobby Naderi). Instead the story focuses on how Nala is picking up strange transmissions on her new implant. She has a vision of a young boy and his dog in a shipping yard filled with pallets. Nala also leaves rants on the Internet and sends weird emails to the boy's father.
The father pays a visit to Nala, having somehow located her. Nala eventually works out the man is Ben's father. When Naola describes the dog, the father says it belongs to his brother Malcolm. So I guess we're to figure Malcolm killed the boy, Ben.
A shadowy creepy figure has been popping up around Nala's apartment. At the end she stumbles out onto the street, and sees the figure and a bunch of other similar figures. They walk past her, and Nala starts ranting about how she can't wake up. She begs someone to wake her up, and we cut to a video she was making at the beginning.
"Singularity" reminds me of the fancy-dancy horror movies of the 90s and 00s where the narrative doesn't make much sense, and it's a deliberate attempt to remain oblique. We never find out if the figure is Ben's ghost, or spirit, or what. The spirit never tells Nala anything useful, and there are large logic-leaps to keep the story together. Like the father somehow tracking Nala down after she sends him emails. Why is the spirit "haunting" Nala? Who are the other figures with the spirit? The spirits of other dead children? If they want to communicate with Nala and gain justice for their murders, why trap her in a nightmare she can't awake from?
The ghost figures don't make any sense, which means the episode is mostly jump scares as director J.D. Dillard throws scene after scene at us of the figure showing up merged with Nala's shadow. Or peering ominously over her shoulder and then disappearing when she turns around. Nala isn't at all sympathetic, and the "biohacking" she does also doesn't make sense. She implants a wifi chip in her arm and starts picking up signals. Doesn't she need to tie it to her nerves? Instead Nala just cuts herself open and pops the chip in. Who knew biohacking was so easy?
And the title has nothing to do with anything in the story.
Of the three stories that make up "Trilogy", "Ma" is the best by far. "Guilt Trip" is okay. "Singularity" makes no sense and is actively confusing in parts. I suppose that is representative of Two Sentence Horror Stories as a whole. A few were far better than the others. Most were okay. And a few were below-par.
There were moments of almost-greatness, but at the end of the day creator Vera Miao seemed more interested in giving us "representational" casts than anything. We got a lot of Asian characters. We got female leads. We got transgender leads. We got elderly leads. We got homisexual leads. I don't want or need to see pasty heterosexual white guys every episode, or even every other episode. I can watch the vast majority of the original The Twilight Zone for that. But it seemed like a lot of the time the representation was the point of any given episode. A for representation, C for storytelling.
Otherwise, as I've noted before, the stories mostly seemed like the writing of people who had just discovered TV horror for themselves, and were so impressed with themselves they didn't see if anyone had done anything similar. Or in a few cases, they had seen stuff like It and Carrie and decided to duplicate it. Because those movies are cool, so they hoped some of that coolness would rub off. That approach will get a summer run of 9 episodes, but it's not going to generate must-see TV for the vast majority of viewers.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Written by Gislef on Sep 20, 2019
Actually I have been done the same thing since ... maybe 3 years ago.
I am so desperate for cannot find this song. I would be appreciated if someone gives a hint or join the search together.
The rhythm has caught me tight for these years.
It's not the most perfect show. But it's ok. Watchable. I just wish I could find the song that was playing in "Ma" that goes "how does it feel to be so alone" I've looked for it..