indiewire.comPosted Aug 10, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC
Arkasha Stevenson who directed Butcher’s Block is doing the first episode of Brand New Cherry Flavor, too!
I know! I would have loved it if she directed the whole season (but the scheduling of the shoot probably means that they need multiple directors). Stevenson's direction is stellar; Butcher's Block is my favorite season of Channel Zero.
Same here, really hope she gets to do another full season of something or a feature soon, Butcher’s Block was definitely my favourite.
I hear you; she’s a seriously talented director. Would love to see her direct a full season or a feature, too.
Got done watching episodes 1 and 2. It's got channel zero vibes for sure and is very good on its own.
It definitely gets more weird...but it's fantastic! Not for everyone.
I love channel zero! I will definitely check this out, thank you!
I read the book way back in the 90's when it first came out, met the author at the time, whole thing was really cool and the series looks like it kicks it up a notch and gives us some great visuals. Really excited for this one.
That's very cool! I don't know anything about the book. It's got a great title!
I definitely recommend reading the book, sure there's going to be drastic differences, there always are, and the book is 30 years old (god were the 90's that long ago???) and the series is more contemporary but still a good read.
I'll put it on my reading list! And no- the 90s were (and will always be) just 10 years ago... weeps
My kinda longish ranty (slightly spoilery) review of this miniseries.
I've watched this miniseries twice now, one time by myself and another with a friend of mine so I could better gauge the show.
I’m a really huge fan of Channel Zero, some writing flaws of the show aside, because of its dreamy surreal atmosphere, characters, and really intriguing concepts for its plots. With that being said I was very disappointed with this show.
While the show starts off intriguing enough with a plot that’s basically the film “Big Fat Liar” with a supernatural twist and goes of the rails pretty quick and gets lost in trying to explain its own mythology, while the main conflict the story hooks you with just gets tossed to the wayside as more of an afterthought.
The reason this happens I believe is because the show is way too long, even at just 8 episodes, the plot is being stretched paper thin, so it needs to introduce random “shocking” elements (like the sex scene in episode 4) that have no long-term consequence on the story in order to distract the viewer from the paper-thin plot on display.
Not to mention the shows main protagonist is incredibly unlikeable and the fact that we have to follow her especially toward the later half of the show is just a miserable time. You are sympathetic for her at the start, and somewhat feel like her desire for revenge is justified, but by the end she does horrible things to people that don’t deserve it in order to get her revenge, to the point that you just feel really sad for who is supposed to be the source of conflict for the story. This wouldn’t be a problem really, Butchers Block also had its protagonist turn into a antagonistic character as well, but this show seems to frame most of her action in a good light, or at least in a somewhat mean spirited goofy tone (“lol she got this family of people lobotomized, how kooky and inconvenient”, “wow the movie producers innocent son is dead and a zombie, good!”), and she never regrets any of her actions unless they directly affect her life personally. I get that the character is supposed to turn out to be this egotistical monster, but the show seems to want us to root for her to win in the end against Boro, when I honestly couldn’t give a shit about what happens to her.
I really wish the plot would have focused more on body horror elements as we see what the curse does to this producer character, and that the main character actually regretted her actions or was appropriately horrified for them as that would have made me take it more seriously and be more invested in the horror that’s going on, but the show constantly undercuts itself with its goofy tone, and by the end its becomes a complete farce.
And god, it really felt like the shows budget really ran out toward the end of the show, constantly revisiting Boros house over and over and over again because a character forgot something and had to go back, or failed to do something and had to go back. It felt like the show just couldn’t leave her god damn boring greenhouse and felt like it was wasting time to get the runtime longer. Not to mention the stupid decision of the characters to keep directly confronting Boro when they could literally just leave, or idk, burn her house completely made of plants down???
And don’t get me started on the complete cartoon of a character that was the eye patch girl. She starts off wanting revenge against the main character, and somehow in like the span of a day she’s Boro’s evil henchman completely willing to give her whole life to her for what? To get back at Lisa? Its ridiculous.
The acting, set design, and directing was great, but this script was very very bad it felt like it highlighted the few bad elements that Channel Zero had and amplified them 10 times. I love yah Nick Antosca, but you really need to focus your stories more and embrace the horror aspects in these intriguing concepts, and stop relying on random shocking scenes with no long-term impact to try and leave an impression on people.
Loved channel zero 1-4 and looking forward to Antlers, but this wasn’t it.
Jeff Ward at the party had a lot of NoEnd house throwbacks.
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oh fuck I didn't know this was from Nick Antosca
Tits are officially jacked