Curse of the Shadows Review: The new Are You Bang for the Dark? is gruesome magic

In the early 90’s, Are you afraid of the dark? was perhaps television’s smartest way to scare children in ways they would never forget. The title is worded as a gamble as well as a premise. It felt like it was getting viewers into a secret – the Midnight Society, where children gather late at night to tell each other scary stories. Are you afraid of the dark? was a smart, low-budget television that understands how to scare children, but also to wake them up, which marks the beginning of a 90-year-old child-oriented horror tree that later starred with RL Stine Goosebumps and Disney Channel’s annual Halloween releases, such as Do not look under the bed and Halloweentown.

Times have changed, and so has the show: in 2019, Are you afraid of the dark returned to Nickelodeon more than 20 years after the original series was completed in 1996. (And 19 years after the end of a short-lived recharge of 1999.) The 2019 miniseries was three episodes and took a page of American horror story, tells one continuous story that ended at the end of the season. It was pretty neat, a story of a dark carnival (no, not that Dark carnival, sorry) and missing children. It did not make the landing, but it did outstanding to set a tone, somewhere halfway Stranger things and iCarly.

In the new season, Curse of the shadows, the series starts again with a new cast in a new city. Shadow Bay – yes, that’s what it’s called – feels like a direct tribute to Stephen King’s fictional town, Castle Rock, in Maine, a gloomy coastal town with many secrets. The story begins with a mystery: Connor Stevens (Parker Queenan), a member of this season’s repeat of the Midnight Society, has gone missing and Luke McCoy (Bryan Gheisar), the lead actor of this season, gets the gang together to find out what is wrong. Among the problems: a cursed forest, and a creature called the Shadow Man, who looks like the Wendigo of NBCs Hannibal.

From the first episode, it all comes together in a sharp, clever way, as a horror that is drawn from dozens of sources and dropped into an intermediate-voltage-friendly environment. There is even a very good jump scare. But it is also an interesting evolution of the central premise of Are you afraid of the dark ?, continue a slow drift away from the original that began with the 2019 miniseries, subtitles Carnival of Doom. Unlike the original series (though similar to the ’99 revival), these horror stories are real, and the kids are actually haunted.

While there is still a Midnight Society, Curse of the shadows makes them more of a Scooby gang interested in supernatural events, though it is implied that they still exchange stories in normal times, when their friends are not missing. It also promotes an idea implied by the changes in the original show that are more explicitly stated Carnival of Doom: the Midnight Society is not just a tradition passed down from generation to generation, it is one that can be held in any city and possibly in each town.

A good horror story for kids is not just about horror, it’s about magic. Part of being a child is finding the world around you a little boring and wanting more. The fact that you are convinced that wonderful things are happening to other people all the time and wish that it would happen to you. Curse of the shadows lean in this idea. The cast is at the age where they start learning how gloomy and worried the world is: Hanna Romero (Beatrice Kitsos) is an avid climate activist, Gabby Lewis (Malia Baker) has her first bad part-time job as a waitress. at a restaurant on the shore, and they all live in a fishing village, and so some of their parents have weather-dependent income. They are worried about their missing friend, but they are also looking for something more to the world around them – it is no coincidence that their search for a literal magic shop takes place.

Not only is the horror really in Curse of the shadowsis implied that the series takes place in a world where every other scary story from the original series may have happened as well. There’s a wink and nod in the first episode – and probably more in the coming – which suggests that a monster from the classic program may appear at any moment. Maybe they just nod to the past, but uniting every story from the past into a new truth is an extremely Stephen King move, and maybe the best thing about it.

King tells many of his stories in the same universe – the same fictional towns, such as Castle Rock, appear over and over again. Dark Tower a series of fantasy novels link much of his work explicitly in a metafictional ür story. However, the majority of the King ivers are not as orchestrated as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is more a work of accumulation: small portions and strong bonds that converge over time. This means fictitious places can bird like that they have a real history, because it has them: a history that is set out in other stories, spread over decades.

Are you afraid of the dark? Curse of the shadows has the feel of history, and this is reinforced by the fact that this kind of programming feels like a rarity. Shows for tweens who are not quite ready for the CW, but who are not really in the Disney Channel’s sketch, are not as prominent as before. The Midnight Society, in their search for Connor, takes viewers along, welcomes them into a decade-long tradition of swapping stories on TV, and scares children with stories of monsters like the Ghastly Grinner, but also suggests that there may be a little more for the world than it may seem. You can find it if you are brave enough when the lights go out.

New episodes of Are you afraid of the dark? Curse of the shadows premiere on Nickelodeon on Fridays.