THEM (USA, 2020) - Amazon Prime’s new horror anthology series THEM opens with a gloriously nightmarish, sepia-toned prologue. A woman and her baby are alone in an isolated house when an apparently innocuous old woman walks down the road towards them. She mentions that “we” saw the woman’s husband leave and begins singing about “Old Black Joe”. When she hears the baby, she brightens and asks “Can I have him? Your boy? I’d like him very, very much.” This is a series that goes there, at full-speed, using a Black family’s suburban hell in the 1950s as a reflection of all that came before and after it. It’s more effectively horrific than it is horror, and easier to accept as loving exploitation than ruthless high-art. Prime.
