To last season's type of psychological thriller episodes. As opposed to the more supernatural stories we got, and got with this season's "Bag Man" and "Elliot".
I get the impression is supposed to be some modern-day fable and has something to say about women, temp gigs, and paranoia. Just like "Bag Man" apparently has something to say about school security lockdown and paranoia. But both episodes' writers are so busy trying to toss in woke elements and directorial touches (like the opening sequence, where Anika imagines a man killing a woman as part of her novel, and a later bit where she imagines Patrick's face changing from genial to demonic and back), that any "message" tends to get loss in the 20-minute runtime and the fancy-dancy elements.
Part of it is just that the run-time and the mixed messages just can't support the main message. First we see that Anika has a vivid imagination. Then both Patrick and the imaginary Holly tells Anika that she has to trust herself more. Since when was a lack of self-confidence shown as an issue with her? She imagines random people killing other people as part of her novel-writing process, and that leads to... a lack of self-confidence. I don't get it, and apparently neither writers Kailey and Sam Spear.
The narrative is also a bit ham-handed. Adding Leanne Lapp as Patrick's dead wife, a figment of Anika's imagination. She's snarky and sarcastic, but her role as to provide vocalization to Anika's survival instincts is a bit too blatant.
So the episode is "horrific" enough. And the main actors--Prasad, Johnson, and Lapp--are good enough with what they're given. It's just a plodding little tale of suspicion and murder. It fills the 20 minutes, and that's it. It just feels like the writers and production staff were going for something more... and they really missed the mark.'
As I noted for "Eliot", I get the impression that the production staff is struggling to turn the two sentences into a TV 20-minute episode. The second sentence, about a corpse's grin, is mildly chilling. But there's no grin in this episode, and two sentences don't seem to have anything to do with the episode based on them. So what's the point of "Two Sentence Horror Stories" if it doesn't stick to the title premise
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
I get the impression is supposed to be some modern-day fable and has something to say about women, temp gigs, and paranoia. Just like "Bag Man" apparently has something to say about school security lockdown and paranoia. But both episodes' writers are so busy trying to toss in woke elements and directorial touches (like the opening sequence, where Anika imagines a man killing a woman as part of her novel, and a later bit where she imagines Patrick's face changing from genial to demonic and back), that any "message" tends to get loss in the 20-minute runtime and the fancy-dancy elements.
Part of it is just that the run-time and the mixed messages just can't support the main message. First we see that Anika has a vivid imagination. Then both Patrick and the imaginary Holly tells Anika that she has to trust herself more. Since when was a lack of self-confidence shown as an issue with her? She imagines random people killing other people as part of her novel-writing process, and that leads to... a lack of self-confidence. I don't get it, and apparently neither writers Kailey and Sam Spear.
The narrative is also a bit ham-handed. Adding Leanne Lapp as Patrick's dead wife, a figment of Anika's imagination. She's snarky and sarcastic, but her role as to provide vocalization to Anika's survival instincts is a bit too blatant.
So the episode is "horrific" enough. And the main actors--Prasad, Johnson, and Lapp--are good enough with what they're given. It's just a plodding little tale of suspicion and murder. It fills the 20 minutes, and that's it. It just feels like the writers and production staff were going for something more... and they really missed the mark.'
As I noted for "Eliot", I get the impression that the production staff is struggling to turn the two sentences into a TV 20-minute episode. The second sentence, about a corpse's grin, is mildly chilling. But there's no grin in this episode, and two sentences don't seem to have anything to do with the episode based on them. So what's the point of "Two Sentence Horror Stories" if it doesn't stick to the title premise
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
