With flashbacks, visions, nightmare realms and bleak hospital meals, this horror knows what it’s doing

The Terror: Devil in Silver ★★★½

This stand-alone horror season has one purpose: to scare you. It does that rather well. Starting with otherworldly menace, graduating to supernatural excess, and peaking with something monstrous in the darkened hallways, The Terror: Devil in Silver moves, quite quickly, with expert care. It’s a good example of a show that knows what it wants to do and allows enough detail to expedite the process. It’s comfortably uncomfortable.

“You were summoned,” Pepper (Dan Stevens) is warned when he’s dumped at the New Hyde psychiatric hospital by a trio of paperwork-averse New York city cops. A former heavy metal drummer turned moving man, Pepper has good intentions but a salty temper. His mistakes soon spiral as New Hyde gets its hands on him. The facility is decrepit, the staff just want to maintain order, and – as Pepper hears it – something large is living in the roof.

Adapted by Victor LaValle from his 2013 novel, Devil in Silver doesn’t feel deeply connected to the previous seasons of The Terror. The horror anthology has focused on historic malfeasance, whether it’s an ice-bound 19th century polar expedition or the evils of World War II interment camp for Japanese-Americans. This is a contemporary tale, although it does once more unfold within another inescapable locale.

Lead director Karyn Kusama tracks the camera down low along grim corridors, following a faded red line that is bloodshed bound. “A malevolent presence has taken hold of this place,” Pepper’s new roommate, Coffee (Chinaza Uche), tells him, with the spooked inmate giving up on trying to alert outsiders. The lurking evil could be the ageing, unseen inmate locked behind a silver door, or a health system so underfunded that horrors become the norm. The show’s response? Let’s do both.

Original Downton Abbey star Stevens has a wavering American accent, but he captures the struggle within Pepper – stay and fight or flee at first chance? The middle episodes prosper on schemes, forging alliances, and gathering intel, as Pepper tries to make sense of the institution’s lifer, Dory (Judith Light), and a head nurse, Miss Chris (CCH Pounder), who doesn’t want to acknowledge the increasingly obvious.

There are some smart grace notes. Just when Pepper’s predicament is getting into One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest territory, a therapist played with creepy cheer by Stephen Root brings the book to group session. But what matters is how the flashbacks and visions, nightmare realms and bleak hospital meals all fit neatly into the show’s momentum. This inexplicable horror works to a tight clock.

The Terror: Devil in Silver is now streaming on Stan (which is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead).

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