Whelp, this season was a complete waste of time. I mean, what were they thinking? There’s hardly anything inspiring here, and it is highly fortunate that this series only consists of six episodes. The first season of The Terror set the benchmark. It was highly enjoyable, with the tense atmosphere and psychological horror suspense. I remember it could be a bit slow-going, but the story and acting were what kept me glued. I skipped season two for no particular reason other than not knowing about it until much later and because reviews for it were mediocre. With season three starring Dan Stevens, I thought it would be a good idea to pick this anthology series up again. Bad, bad idea.

So, an insane asylum. That’s the atmosphere and location for this season. OK, not what I would have wanted, only because of how clichéd it can be. I mean, can you believe what would happen if the inmates started taking medication and began hallucinating about seeing something that isn’t there? Can you imagine a situation where an inmate becomes rebellious enough to stop taking their pills by spitting them back out or hiding them? Can you imagine a scenario where an inmate finally starts to convince others that something they thought was just in their heads is real, teaming up together to fight this evil presence? Oh wait. Yes, you can, because that’s exactly what happens here. There’s rarely anything in this show that bucks the clichés of your typical asylum. Well, I guess maybe the one weird thing is how calm most of the inmates are. I would have thought a few truly crazy and out-of-control inmates would be inserted or two to complete the insane asylum picture, but everyone seemed calm enough.

The main story revolves around a mysterious evil presence in the hospital ward. It would seem a patient locked behind the secretive silver door is to be blamed. However, we learn quick enough that the patient, while he does exist behind the door, is not only very old in age but has been in a coma for a while and restrained to his bed as well. So yeah, no way it could be him. Here is where the psychological element comes into play. Are the inmates just crazy in imagining things or is there more to it than what we see? Why are some more affected by this evil presence than others?

I’m just failing to see what positives there are. Each episode seems to drag. The last episode, which ties everything together, felt like some damn joke with a bunch of chairs and tables being thrown around. Let me see if I have this right. It turns out that Dr. Walter was a doctor in the past who performed hundreds of lobotomies on patients. That wasn’t evil enough, so he decided to travel around the country in a buggy van so he could “help” more patients rather than being limited to those in his ward. One of the patients decides to kill Dr. Walter. We then learn that Dr. Walter was indeed possessed by said evil presence (the devil?), and because the patient killed him, the evil presence basically thought, “What am I going to do now?” So it takes over the patient instead. However, he is quickly discovered for the murder and is restrained behind the silver door until the present day. The patient behind the door is the one who killed the evil-possessed Dr. Walter.

The obvious question I have is that if the actual Dr. Walter was murdered in the past, then why did they continue to use him? The devil supposedly left him when the patient murdered him. If it wants to continue its destruction by feeding on others’ grief, misery, and anger, it needs another host, and that’s when it jumped to the patient. At least, that’s what I think. It tries to latch onto Pepper by getting him to “agree” and say “yes” to it by offering a way out after reminding him of his past grief and the guilt of leaving his young son behind. But why in Dr. Walter’s image? He clearly doesn’t exist physically. Maybe I missed the part where Dr. Walter “is” the devil itself and there was no evil presence that possessed him in the first place. We see at the very end that Pepper now has to live an existence with the devil, in the image of Dr. Walter, which only he can see, constantly persuading and pressuring him to do evil things. We can’t hear what he’s actually yammering to Pepper about, as he is being ignored by him. Pepper’s only hope of staying grounded in reality is through the support of his son. That last scene reminds me a lot of the ending of the Japanese horror flick Shutter.

Fans of horror, grief, and guilt might like this series. We understand Pepper’s regrets regarding his son, but does he truly deserve to be in a hospital ward for the mentally ill at the end? We see that he was innocently thrown in from the first episode due to lazy cops, but we know that Pepper isn’t crazed of mind. If anything, he has anger issues and maybe needs to attend anger management instead. There was nothing I saw prior to him being thrown into the ward that even hinted that Pepper had mental problems. Anyway, this show was a big-time waster for me. Even at six episodes, around 45 minutes each, it felt too long. It could likely have been condensed to three or four.