This article was published on 4/28 and republished on 4/30.
Well, we have a rather interesting situation going on over at Amazon Prime Video right now. A new show has arrived and with it, a 100% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and 97% score from audiences so far. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. We’re talking about Them – The Scare.
So, this is more unusual than a new or returning show arriving. Them – The Covenant was originally a 2021 series on Amazon Prime Video, set in 1953 about a black family moving into a white neighborhood, covering racism mixed with supernatural hauntings and threats.
It was not terribly well-received. It had a 57% on Rotten Tomatoes with a 67% audience score. It came and went without much fuss, but it was still renewed for a second season. But not a true second season, it’s an anthology. So now that Them – The Scare is here, the show is now set in 1993 and deals with an LAPD detective who takes on a murder that has something supernatural reach into her family itself. It shares a lead actress with season 1, Deborah Ayorinde, but essentially everything else is different.
So, for whatever reason, this show has gotten much, much better in its second season, it seems. Sky-high reviews compared to the first, and it’s currently the #2 show or movie on Amazon Prime Video, behind only the service’s high profile Fallout video game adaptation that’s also receiving rave reviews. It’s head of two popular Prime movies, Road House and Ricky Stanicky.
It’s pretty impressive for a show that was not received all that well to return after three years and create a much better second season, but anthologies have the ability to reset like that, so it’s clear that some time away did the series good. I know Amazon must be excited about this, as if they can keep it going, they could find themselves with their own American Horror Story type anthology that can continue on indefinitely. In this case the “Ryan Murphy” of it all would be Little Marvin, the creator of the series. Though it has a vast writing and directing team. Ti West, of Pearl, X and MaXXXine fame, even directed two episodes of season 1.
The entire season was dropped as a binge release, so you can watch all eight episodes right now, which range in length from 30 to 45 minutes, a pretty breezy watch. I’m going to give it a shot myself as I am very curious to see if it lives up to these reviews.
Update (4/30): Since writing this post, I went to check out Them – The Scare myself and found that yes, it’s really excellent. Horror TV is very hard to pull off well, but what Little Marvin and his collection of writers and directors have done here is excellent.
I quite literally just skipped the first worse-received season to jump into The Scare, and if there is some connecting thread I’m missing, it doesn’t seem to matter, as you can enjoy it all by itself.
I cannot speak highly enough about the performance of Luke James as Edmund, one of the most terrifying portraits of a killer I’ve seen realized on the small screen. He threw 1,000% into this performance and it shines through loud and clear onscreen. He’s tragic and horrifying at the same time. Similarly, I thought Deborah Ayorinde is also stellar as the lead, a black female cop up against a system that despises her.
If this is the quality of this show we can expect going forward, I cannot wait to see more anthology installments in the future. This is a wholly unique project and even if it’s not a super high profile one for Amazon, it’s a fantastic addition to their roster of shows, and they’d be wise to continue to nurture all the talent here.
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