The Terror returns with Devil in Silver, the latest volume of the supernatural anthology series, this time set in a dilapidated psychiatric hospital where a malevolent spirit torments patients and staff alike. The show, which began in 2018 with a polar expedition tale about Sir John Franklin’s voyage, follows a second series set during the second world war about shapeshifters from Japanese folklore. After a hiatus, the new season delivers a double dose of horror: an evil spirit moving between patients’ bodies at New Hyde psychiatric hospital, and the grim realities of the US mental healthcare system.
Patients and staff trapped in a failing system
Dan Stevens stars as Pepper, admitted to New Hyde after three policemen who arrested him for fighting threw him in rather than completing paperwork. There he meets Dorry (Judith Light), the longest-serving resident, placed there decades ago by her husband; Kofi (Chinaza Uche), a former structural engineer from Ghana; and Loochie, played by non-binary actor b, who ended up in the system after a violent incident with a sibling. The hospital, underfunded and understaffed, functions more as a holding pen than a care facility.
Horror tropes and a locked silver door
Pepper learns from fellow patients and some staff that the key to the haunting lies behind a locked silver door, beyond which is a room containing the comatose body of Arnold, who received a transorbital lobotomy after killing a doctor. Jump scares, gory set pieces, flickering lights, and an unsettling turn from John Benjamin Hickey as founder Dr Walter provide the horror elements in a fairly rote manner, though the ending redeems the lack of innovation.
Metaphor and real-life terrors
The show uses the monster as a metaphor for mental instability and the systems meant to address it. Dorry embodies the effects of misogyny in medicine, racial prejudice permeates the fates of patients of colour, and none of the patients come from money that might have protected them. The series works best as straightforward drama, with real-life horrors of old-fashioned treatments and contemporary care standards proving bleaker than any imaginary beast. Pepper’s ease of being trapped in the system, drugged on arrival and sleeping through discharge, his guilt over abandoning his young son, and his path to redemption are more terrifying than any bogeyman. The Terror: Devil in Silver aired on Sky Atlantic and is on Now, and available on Stan in Australia.
