There's a mystery that I went into the third installment of "The Terror" intent on solving, but I never came up with a satisfying answer. I'd read the Victor LaValle book that this new miniseries is based on, The Devil in Silver and I couldn't figure out why it was decided that this was good source material for a series of "The Terror." The first two were historical fiction as well as being supernatural thrillers. The Devil in Silver takes place in the present day. It does feature some flashbacks, but I wouldn't characterize it as a big part of the book or the new season.
Pepper (Dan Stevens) is arrested for assaulting his girlfriend's ex, and the cops decide to dump him at New Hyde Psychiatric Hospital for a few days to avoid paperwork. Under the care of Dr. Anand (Aasif Mandvi) and Head Nurse Miss Chris (CCH Pounder), Pepper quickly discovers that he's trapped in an administrative Catch-22, unable to keep his behavior in check long enough to get out of the facility on his own, and with no one able to intercede for him on the outside. He eventually makes friends with the other patients, including his roommate Coffee (Chinaza Uche), long time resident Dorry (Judith Light), and aggressive youngster Loochie (b). From them he learns about the mysterious presence in the hospital, apparently connected to a room behind a silver door that's off limits. Other members of the cast include Stephen Root, John Benjamin Hickey, and Maureen Sebastian.
"The Devil in Silver" is all around a puzzling creation. I found it very difficult to follow the story, even though I'd read the source novel. Unlike the previous seasons of "The Terror," "The Devil in Silver" is only six episodes, and feels extremely rushed. The plotting is messy and haphazard, and my guess is that the episode order was cut down at least once. I liked many of the individual performances, and I thought that the premise was very well set up, but a lot of the dramatic potential was squandered. Worse, it was rarely very scary. In fact, the more we knew about the supernatural forces behind the bad things happening at the hospital, the less scary it got.
Where the series is strongest is when it focuses on the plight of the patients, who are a vulnerable population unable to properly advocate themselves, stuck in a dysfunctional, understaffed, underfunded institution where they've been all but forgotten. The staff shows moments of kindness, but have their own problems to worry about. Coffee and Dorry both get spotlight episodes, which are among the strongest of the season. Dr. Anand is often put in the part of petty tyrant, but his concerns over New Hyde being shut down are reasonable. If the place goes down, will the patients have anywhere to go? My favorite parts of the book were likewise the examinations of systemic and social issues.
Conversely, the series is at its weakest when it's trying to be a genre piece. The show runs into the same trouble with its supernatural elements that so many weaker horror thrillers do, which is that it spends too much time trying to answer questions that nobody asked. Do we really need to get into a convoluted backstory to understand that there's something bad in the hospital preying on everyone? Why do the phenomena associated with it seem so inconsistent from appearance to appearance? Even though we have Pepper on heavy medication being an unreliable narrator to account for some of the inconsistencies, the writing is downright sloppy. Worse, it's not nearly as much fun to watch as it should be.
Still, the production values are excellent, and the talent involved is strong - directing duties are handled by Karyn Kusama, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr., and Craig William Macneill. The ensemble is consistently very good, though Dan Stevens often feels hampered by weak material. Judith Light as the dotty Dorry is my pick for MVP. It feels ungenerous to say this, but I wish I'd seen the dumbed down, two hour version of this story that simply focused on the scares and the thrills, instead of the more ambitious miniseries version that never seems to quite know what it wants to be.
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