TV Review — Masters of Horror

I love the idea of this series. An anthology with the “masters” of the genre — guys like John Carpenter, Don Coscarelli, and Larry Cohen directing — sounds amazing. But when you actually get down to it, only about half the episodes are directed by people I’d consider a “master of horror.” I don’t know how much of that is just they just couldn’t get people like Wes Craven or David Cronenberg for whatever reason, how much of it was they had genuinely low qualifications for who could be considered a “master” (this is a show started by Mick Garris, after all, who’s one of the least accomplished directors in the show), or how much of it was they expected a lot of the younger directors who had a successful movie to become much bigger than they did. I guess you could say the lattermost sort of worked out in terms of Lucky McKee, who only I think had one feature film under his belt. But the other young people they apparently bet on went on to direct Stonehearst Asylum, The Alphabet Killer, and Parasomnia. Not exactly inspiring filmographies for a lot of people.

And the show reflects that. Even the more accomplished directors, generally speaking, were not putting out quality work around this time. In some cases (like John Carpenter with “Cigarette Burns”), this show would be an exception.

I’d describe this show overall as pretty average. Using a Showtime budget, it’s got some nice gore and makeup effects, but sometimes that’s all I really enjoyed. A lot of these stories just aren’t very good.

The first season is respectable, but the second season really shit the bed. It’s not a great show, and it honestly never really felt like it was close to being great. The Takashi Miike episode really stood out, though, to be fair.

Rating: 5/10