ORBzine - Into The Dark (2018) TV Review

Season 1

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 1] The Body
Shown 05 Oct 18

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 2] Flesh & Blood
Shown 02 Nov 18

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 3] Pooka!
Shown 07 Dec 18

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 4] New Year, New You
Shown 28 Dec 18

Four young women meet up on New Year's Eve, 2018. They are old friends who went to High School together, so they talk about the good old days.

Danielle is a wellness influencer, and the others seem in her sway. However, there is more to it than that.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 5] Down
Shown 01 Feb 19

On Valentine's night, a pair of office drones are the last to leave the building for the evening. Unfortunately they get stuck in the elevator. For some reason, the building's security guard does not seem to be answering.

Eventually, the actual plot takes off. One of the trapped people has a stalker, and this turns into a battle reminiscent of the movie P2 (2007) . There may be a bit of a new spin on it, but in all fairness it is just not that original.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 6] Treehouse
Shown 01 Mar 19

Peter Rake (Jimmi Simpson - Unhinged ) is a celebrity chef with his own cooking show on TV. He takes a few days off work to hang out in his father's old house in the countryside. It is too big and fancy to be a Cabin in the Woods , but it fulfills the same function.

A group of women go camping nearby. They are a diverse bunch - the hot one ( Julianna Guill ), the older one ( Mary McCormack ), the Latinx one ( Stephanie Beatriz ), the Black one ( ) and the English one ( ). They claim to be a bachelorette party, but this is a horror series so they are probably up to no good.

Peter is the viewpoint character, so we presume he is the hero. Simpson was clearly cast because he is an everyman, so he can be a reactive victim without the expectation of being a proactive action star. In other words, he is the Final Girl.

The bachelorettes are witches, and in the #MeToo era they are made to look like the good guys. The male character gets victim-blamed: Peter is in his old home to hide out, not unlike Justin's character in Barbarian . Of course, all this really does is pretend that every generation of women has been powerless ... even the current one, with the exception of an elite group of empowered avengers. They are so inferior to men that they cannot compete on a level playing field ... but they can take revenge with impunity when they get the urge.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 7] I'm Just F*cking with You
Shown 01 Apr 19

Larry is an Internet troll. He is not political, he just loves posting cruel things on social media. His specific target is a girl named Cindy who is about to get married the next day.

Larry books into the Pink Motel, where he waits for his sister Rachel ( Jessica McNamee ). The motel's night manager, Chester, is a weirdo and a practical joker. Of course, he is just messing with Larry the same way Larry messes with people online. However, the jokes take a violent twist.

The end credits sequence puts a different spin on things, and actually add a bunch of questions.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 8] All That We Destroy
Shown 03 May 19

A female geneticist ( Samantha Mathis ) clones a young woman, to provide murder fodder for her tweenage son - a burgeoning serial killer. She uses a VR simulation to talk with the boy's father (Frank Whalley - Broken Arrow ), so such technology is clearly commonplace. However, either she never considered using it or it is inadequate as treatment for her son.

A tweenage girl moves into the nearest house, half a mile away. She becomes attached to the tweenage boy, and suspicious of the girl he is living with. Since both of them match the victim profile, the story's suspense comes from the question of which one will get killed first.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 9] They Come Knocking
Shown 07 Jun 19

A widower (Clayne Crawford - Buffy the Vampire Slayer ) takes his two young daughters on a road trip. They stop off at a deserted stop in the desert, and get besieged by monsters.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 10] Culture Shock
Shown 04 Jul 19

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 11] School Spirit
Shown 02 Aug 19

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1, Episode 12] Pure
Shown 06 Sep 19

Into The Dark (2018)

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 1 , Episode 1 ]
Shown th October 2022 [Wednesday]

Reviewed in our special supplement

Season 2

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 1] Uncanny Annie
Shown 04 Oct 19

A group of tweenage college students hang out at halloween. They play a board-game, Uncanny Annie, but it takes over. Now they must continue playing the game, and if they fail it will kill them.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 2] Pilgrim
Shown 01 Nov 19

Some yuppies summon a Pilgrim and his wife ( Elyse Levesque ) to stay with them over the Thanksgiving holiday. Unfortunately the Pilgrims are real-life religious fanatics, with an Old Testament approach to whatever they perceive as sins.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 3] A Nasty Piece of Work
Shown 06 Dec 19

The protagonist is a gofer in a large corporation, willing to do anything to get promoted. The boss (Julian Sands - Warlock ) invites the gofer and his wife ( Angela Serafayan ) to dinner one night ...

The boss and his wife ( Molly Hagan ) subject the gofer and his office rival to a series of tests. These seem like nasty pranks at first, but lives are on the line.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 4] Midnight Kiss
Shown 27 Dec 19

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 5] My Valentine
Shown 07 Feb 20

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 6] Crawlers
Shown 06 Mar 20

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 7] Pooka Lives!
Shown 03 Apr 20

Will Wheaton ( Star Trek: TNG ) is less than supportive of his wife. She invented a Furbee-type stuffed toy called Pooka, complete with glowing eyes and voice playback system.

A year later, Derrick returns to his hometown to stay with his childhood friend Molly ( Felicia Day ). Derrick has suffered online cancellation by an influencer named Jax, and has now got a job at the company that makes Pooka dolls.

Derrick and his friends make up a meme about Pooka. It goes viral, but then the murder reports start. Pooka has become the new Slenderman ...

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 8] Delivered
Shown 08 May 20

Pregnant Valerie ( ) and her husband Tom (Michael Cassidy - ) befriend Jenny ( Tina Majorino ), a fellow pregnant person. She invites them to hang out in her Cabin in the Woods .

Valerie has been avoiding Riley, a man from her past. Is he an unlikely saviour, or a misogynist strawman in a misandrist cliche?

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 9] Good Boy
Shown 12 Jun 20

Maggie Glenn ( Judy Greer ) is a thirtynine-year-old journalist with both personal and professional problems. She is single, thinking she is too good for the men she meets on dating apps, but she cannot afford artificial insemination or whatever. Her boss (Steve Guttenberg - Police Academy ) downsizes the magazine she works at, making it an all-digital online product and turning the employees into independent contractors. On the bright side, he advises her to get an emotional support animal.

Maggie goes to the pound, and buys the smallest doggie there. However, strange things happen when he is around. He is not like other dogs. She eventually works this out, when the bodies start to pile up.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 10] The Current Occupant
Shown 17 Jul 20

Henry is a shooting victim, hospitalised with brain trauma that has given him amnesia. He agrees to an experimental treatment. The treatment leads him to believe that he is the POTUS, and that he has been put there under a fake name. This is a bit like what happened to JFK in Bubba-Hotep .

Is Henry being tortured because he is secretly a political prisoner? Or is it just because he is a mentally ill person?

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 11] Tentacles
Shown 12 Feb 21

A young woman leaves her boyfriend and goes on the run. She hooks up with another man, and they have a lot of sex. Seriously, this is real softcore porn stuff.

The story switches to the new boyfriend's perspective. He begins to physically man mentally decline, and eventually suspects his new girlfriend might have something to so with it.

Into The Dark (2018) [Season 2, Episode 12] Blood Moon
Shown 26 Mar 21

Esme ( Megalyn E. ) is involved in some off-screen unpleasantness involving a pump-action shotgun. She and her pre-teen son move into a small town in Midwest USA, where they settle into life in a remote farmhouse.

Esme gets a job as a waitress, and home-schools her son. She tries to keep a low profile, although a loudmouth redneck turns out to be the Sheriff which leads to a frisking scene reminiscent of Crash.

Esme's secret is that her son takes after his father. Once a month, on the night of the full moon, he needs to be locked in a cage and fed raw meat. Of course, eventually this routine is disrupted and Esme has to clean up the mess.