Channel Zero: Candle Cove Review (TV Series, 2016)
content warning: blood, gore, violence against children, violence against women, gun violence, foul language, bullying, hospital footage
Channel Zero is an anthology TV series from SyFy. Each limited-run season focused on a different adaptation of a creepypasta story, essentially horror urban legends created and shared on the Internet.
I’ve been entranced by the Shudder login page for quite some time because of the splash art. Aside from recognizing Coralie Fargeat’s brilliant Revenge and Panos Cosmatos’ inimitable Mandy, the site features a third character I was aware of but had not seen in action. There’s this creature made entirely of teeth, a humanoid figure staring into your soul. This is one of the monsters of Channel Zero: Candle Cove, and I now see why it’s standing dead center.
Candle Cove is adapted from Kris Straub’s story collection of the same name. This is one of the earliest creepypastas to gain widespread traction on the Internet. Straub presented a world through a message board where a group of adults recalled the existence of a children’s TV show that has no evidence of ever actually existing. The story concerned a young girl who befriends pirates, which isn’t that strange for a 1980s kid series. The characters are all marionettes, including a skeleton that makes clothing from the skin of children. While everyone had a different experience connected to the show, they all discover the same truth in the end: everyone else only saw static on the TV when Candle Cove aired.
The adaptation on Channel Zero is brilliant. The visual impact of the poorly aged puppet show within the show is horrifying on its own. Then it turns into a murder mystery series about a town where children were murdered while Candle Cove aired on TV. 28 years later, one of the survivors returns to the town after a nervous breakdown caused by nightmares of the show.
Each episode of Channel Zero: Candle Cove is themed to a different episode of the TV series. The infamous screaming puppet episode from the original story is featured, as well as episodes dedicated to visiting the crows nest, entering the bravery cave, and defending the ship during a storm. These concepts are twisted in unexpected ways, pushing the town in both timelines to new worlds of terror.
This series is chaotic in a way only a true piece of weird fiction could be. When you abandon the rules of reality, you’re left with whatever you want to exist. The layers of horror and criminal behavior happening is utterly unpredictable. No one can be trusted and no one really comes out as a hero. Every time you learn to trust someone, they do something to shake your trust.
The narrative feels like it’s changing as it goes along because it does. The footage of Candle Cove repeated in an episode can and does change as it airs. A sound cue, the quality of the footage, what characters appear in the same episode can all change depending who is watching it where. The version on a TV is different than the version in a dream or a computer screen or a children’s imagination. That’s terrifying.
Channel Zero: Candle Cove is also violent body horror. The teeth monster is only one of the monsters on the series. They get worse as the series goes on. So does the violence, which is hard to take. The first episode features a child’s finger being broken by a bully; it’s one of the tamer moments by the end of the series. Let me put it this way. If you were disappointed in the original I Know What You Did Last Summer films not using the hook enough, you’ll see the many ways that particular weapon can be wielded against people in Candle Cove.
To the series’ credit, there is a level of self-control at play. Children do get injured and murdered on this show, but only one attack is shown for a specific narrative purpose. The rest is edited around to not be as extreme. The adult victims? Bring on the gore. You’ll see as much as a TV show could get away with five years ago.
Channel Zero: Candle Cove feels like a living creepypasta. This is a contemporary style of weird fiction that relies on leaving gaps of knowledge for your imagination to fill in. The series has a resolution, but it’s not necessarily an explanation, and that’s terrifying.
Channel Zero: Candle Cove is streaming on Shudder.