By [ad_1]
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Stephen King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot” and Chapelwaite Episode 1 “Blood Calls Blood,” airing now on EPIX.
Chapelwaite’s premiere shows that the series is taking a slow-burn approach to setting up the supernatural horror within. In “Jerusalem’s Lot,” the short story that inspired Chapelwaite, Stephen King also attempts a similar build up to the horror, but due to the constraints of the short story’s length, that build up still bears a much faster pace. There are two major on screen horrific moments in the episode — Robert Boone’s attempted murder of Charles when Charles was a child and the gruesome murder of Edward Mallory. However, the rest of the horror is more subtle, from the scratching in the walls to Charles Boone’s hallucinations of worms. With these more smaller moments, the episode still lays the groundwork for the horror to come.
The premiere begins with Charles Boone as a child witnessing his father Robert Boone digging a grave for him in the yard. While Charles’ mother, Sara Boone, tries to stop Robert from getting back in the house, Robert strangles her, and Charles attempts to hide from Robert. Robert finds Charles, drags him to the yard and hits him over the head with a shovel. While Charles, still conscious but disoriented, watches as his father, raving about the coming of a worm, tries to bury him alive, Sara Boone, alive after all, shoots Robert in the head, and Robert falls into the grave beside a traumatized Charles. The sequence lasts only about three minutes and thirty seconds, but in that brief time, the episode establishes Charles’ childhood trauma and his fear of becoming like his father, which guides many of his decisions throughout the premiere.
The series then shifts from one traumatic moment to another as, thirty-three years later, Charles and his children Honor, Loa and Tane attend a sea burial for his wife Maya Boone, an event that serves as the catalyst for the Boone family to move to Chapelwaite, the Boone family manor in the small town of Preacher’s Corners. Once there, the family mainly deals with their grief, the townspeople’s suspicion of their family and the community’s overt and covert racism toward Honor, Loa and Tane.
Still, amidst these very real trials, the show also begins to weave in the more supernatural elements, many of which center on the house. The Boone family is warned away from the cellar, supposedly because of the dangerous stairs, but the cellar itself still seems creepy and abnormal. Charles also begins to hear what he assumes are rats in the walls of Chapelwaite itself. They also find the graves of departed Boone family members on the property, which is explained away. When Rebecca Morgan, the children’s new governess, plays a pendulum game with them to find spirits, a whippoorwill crashes into a window, leading the group to find the open cellar door, At the end of the episode, Charles begins hallucinating worms in his bathtub, imagery that seems to come from his childhood trauma. All of these elements make it clear that Chapelwaite has more secrets yet to be revealed.
In Preacher’s Corners, the Boone family learns of an illness that has spread through the town, which mainly has affected children so far. When Tane wanders off, he is accosted by Susan Mallory, a young girl who has contracted the illness. Many people in the town blame Phillip and Stephen Boone for the illness, which further fuels the townspeople’s animosity toward the Boone family. The illness is mainly a new element added to the series, and the premiere makes it clear that this illness may not have natural causes.
Both the real world and supernatural horrors combine to form the other major horrific moment of the premiere. Edward Mallory, Susan Mallory’s father, distraught over his daughter’s condition, travels at night to try to burn down Chapelwaite to destroy what he believes is the root cause of his daughter’s illness. On the way, a man in dark clothing, mainly hidden in the shadows, kills Edward’s horse, slits Edward’s throat and drains Edward’s blood into a bucket. Once finished, the man lights Edward on fire and walks away. The practiced precision of the man’s actions show that he has murdered like this before and likely will again, but his actions are not explained for now. This moment is more effective in the episode because the rest of the horror, save for the opening sequence, has been more subtle and grounded in reality rather than fantasy or the supernatural.
Most of the audience for Chapelwaite is probably aware that Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and “Jerusalem’s Lot” contain vampires or vampire-like creatures and will connect both the illness and Edward’s murder to a possible vampiric infestion in the town of Preacher’s Corners. However, showrunners Peter and Jason Filardi choose not to confirm their horror in the premiere in favor of building the atmosphere slowly to allow the more horrific moments to have a greater effect overall. The premiere shows that the series overall will begin by establishing more of the town and the character’s relationships before delving in to the supernatural and cosmic horror that formed the core of Stephen King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot.”
To see how the horror continues to unfold, watch new episodes on Sundays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on EPIX and streaming afterward on EPIX NOW streaming app.
About The Author
[ad_2]
