Twilight Zone episode review — 3.26 — Little Girl Lost
Episode 3.26 “Little Girl Lost”
Original air date: March 16, 1962
Writer: Richard Matheson (adapted from his short story)
Director: Paul Stewart
Rating: 10/10
Following basically a series low in “The Fugitive,” The Twiligth Zone came back with a vengeance with a remarkable episode from writer Richard Matheson — his first episode since “Once Upon a Time.”
If you’ve seen Poltergeist or Insidious, it’s basically the same plot, only without any ghosts or demons. Somehow, a little girl has fallen into another dimension, and her parents are desperate to get her out. They call in a physicist friend, Bill, to come help. Bill finds the opening in the wall and marks it with some chalk. Tina’s father, Chris, decides to go in after her. Their dog has already run in there after Tina.
The layout of the new dimension is pretty creatively shot. There are a lot of dutch angles and every noise echoes. It looks pretty neat, and genuinely surreal.
Chris’s wife, Ruth, and Bill keep shouting for him to hurry up. The dog finds Tina, and Chris tells her to follow it to him. He grabs them, and he’s pulled back into the third dimension.
It’s a happy reunion, but it’s disturbing, too, as Bill reveals that the opening to the dimension had been shut, and it was growing smaller and smaller the longer he was in there. Chris is disturbed to think of what would have happened had it closed and he was still there.
It’s a really well executed episode. The scene with Bill finding the dimensions of the portal is really interesting, and has some good effects for the time, and I love the surreal quality of the fourth dimension.
