The King marriage series is back, which has broken any expectation that can be placed on a horror product. ‘Evil’ season 3 arrives on the SyFy channel with its usual combination of humor, social issues, disturbing tension scenes and non-one-dimensional characters that plays with the rules of the genre without taking it too seriously, but managing to unsettle more effectively than many supposedly terrifying movies.
The dilemma of platforms and terror
Before entering it, it is convenient to situate ourselves in the current moment of the genre. The horror film has reached a record number one at the box office this 2022. Movies like ‘Nope!’, ‘barbarian‘, ‘Scream’, ‘The Invitation’ did it, the recent ‘Halloween: the end’ and ‘Smile’ have not only had the podium, but they have shared it simultaneously, and if we count superheroic variations like ‘Morbius’ and ‘ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ the limit is extended. There is a widespread interest that has rarely been seen in history, and at the same time the bubble of streaming content is disconcerting.
Series like ‘Chapelwaite’ or ‘Evil’ are consequences of this general interest, but at the same time are proposals made from residual platforms. Epix or Paramount try to break the barrier and gain a foothold in the North American market, but they are still on the margins that make it difficult for their quality products to become really popular. And the case is more serious in Spain, where many of these productions are delegated to “old normal” cable channels, with schedules and difficult access, something that for series like ‘Evil’ is a great barrier.
This not only creates a lack of availability, but also a lack of association with the quality defined by its source channel. The procedural format of ‘Evil’ is perceived as belonging to “the old television” in a cheap elitism highly biased by availability, when what really makes the style of the King couple is the game with those approaches and how dynamite them to create an almost postmodern idea of what a television series is today that does not depend on a concept and closing, of those that also now lead on many occasions to the typical filler chapter.
A procedural that constantly plays not to be
As such, the narrative remains much the same as it has always been from the beginning, with the rock-solid trio at the center, psychologist Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers), the newly appointed priest David Acosta (Mike Colter), and skeptical tech genius Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandwi), and to an extension of the series as a whole, which he has adapted at his own pace and knows exactly his niche on televisionwhich helps keep the three of them studying such mind-boggling phenomena as scientists studying the weight of a soul, horny sex demons, or a Devil employing people in an office building.
The team that the Church has assigned to investigate these strange occurrences remains effective and tight-knit, with different perspectives challenging each other, with their positions, albeit, becoming more and more flexible. David is open to the supernatural, and Ben wants to discredit him, but both experience signs that make them always doubt their convictions, as does Kristen, somewhat affected by her experiences in the previous season. ‘Evil’ seems to only assert itself as a procedural series thanks to its characters’ relationships, but constantly shakes them to avoid getting too comfortable with the status quo.
In this way, it has gone from being a series focused on cases of the week so that these are sometimes a background detail within a larger puzzle. If season 2 blew up the rules of what may or may not be a series of its features, season 3 opens its world to new players and possibilities, taking advantage of many of the open paths that were left unanswered in the previous one to establish a new game board with the elements of good versus evil more defined. We continue with the sigils as a master plan with which many cases can be explained.
On the edge of ‘The Devil’s Seed’
The script unites some of the points that had been scattered and at the same time throws a new handful of them, always with the idea of the supernatural as a possibility, less and less fictional and more real, but always leaving blind spots to see the hand black behind the master plan of evil. Another unusual point is that season 3 shows that the cases of the first season are also recovered and rescuedsomething is taken advantage of, no matter how small, which indicates that the plan of the series is under an invisible control where nothing is by chance.
Kristen’s eggs are recovered, visual details of her house are revealed in a jaw-dropping ending, and many ideas bounce around codes, clues, recurring characters, and keys to classic horror movies like ‘The Devil’s Seed’ and ‘The prophecy’. The script always plays with the conventions of horror as if it were a parody, often with absurd humor, traditional situations or exaggerated demons, but it always saves a card for, at the same time, manage to be scary, uncomfortable and even reach very dark areas.
The season finale or episode 8 are slaps that break any expected convention in a series of these characteristics. In ‘Evil’ anything can happen. There are hidden messages, subliminal clues, and enough material to leave the show’s reddit forum theorizing. and cracking hidden codes every week. In this season the episodes have more entity, sometimes reaching almost an hour, although the number has been reduced. Perhaps there is no episode like the one with the monastery or the elevator, but the joint solidity is greater.
we don’t deserve it
As for the appearances, with wonderful designs and traditional FX, we must not forget episodes until 2019, since old acquaintances are taken into account again and never fail to provide an attractive element for fans of the most tangible and visual horror. A pity that even with these gifts the series does not enter more into the conversation of fans of the genre that once promoted ‘The X Files’ as one of the key series of the format. With attention to franchises of diminishing quality such as ‘Halloween’ or raising experiences of viewing to altars such as ‘Barbarian’.
‘evil’ is one of the smartest and richest series ever created in horror. Spot. On the one hand, it plays in the league of RKO classics, with the elegance and ambiguity of Val Newton, and on the other, it works within the great standards of satanic cinema, so it is difficult to understand how there is not a regular conversation with each new premiere. There are a lot of podcasts specialized in horror, in Spain in particular, and yet it is difficult to find analysis of the series, mentions or a follow-up that is given to other mediocre premieres that have the advantage of entering from other massive platforms.
A pity, because season 3 of ‘Evil’ puts the cards on the table for a fourth in which nothing can ever be the same. A daring, inconceivable and even repulsive ending, which allows reviewing everything seen, recovering episodes, establishing theories and debating his many sharp notes on current affairs and on the relationship between faith and social and political events, but always with demons, strange beings and animatronics worthy of 1980s movies. We hope that Paramount+ continues to bet on the series for a while because, said bluntly, we don’t deserve it.