REVIEW: ‘Them: The Scare’ Vastly Improves On Season 1

I wasn’t a fan of Them’s first season. The potato sack scene broke something in me, and the series never aimed to repair that or make it make sense. Them: The Scare, the second season of the Little Marvin created Prime Video Original series, is just as mean but with a different perspective informing it all. It leaves you just as uncomfortable, but for vastly different reasons that make it better than the first season.

Set decades after the first season in 1991 Los Angeles, Them: The Scare centers on LAPD Homicide Detective Dawn Reeve. Embodying the noir thriller aesthetic before it hits a horror stride, Dawn is assigned to a new case: the gruesome murder of a foster mother that has left even the most hardened detectives shaken. Bodies twisted, children scared, the murder is just the tip of the iceberg as a pattern begins to emerge.

Set against the backdrop of the police violently attacking Rodney King, Dawn is determined to stop a killer targeting people that others in her department clearly do not care about. But as she draws closer to the truth, something ominous and malevolent grips her and her family. Secrets fuel her dissent into a fear-fueled chaos.

The first season of Them, titled Them: Covenant, was suffocating. It was constant trauma with no clear focus on who it was made for. Them: The Scare turns away from the overbearing reinforcement of real-life harm. Instead, it leads to more thoughtful manifestations of racism via the police system. Yes, the series hasn’t lost its cultural commentary in its second season, but it has refined it.

Little Marvin imbues standard horror tropes like exorcisms, slashers, and hauntings with commentary. However, he uses it almost as a red herring (pun intended) as the series continues. Them: The Scare doesn’t devalue the racist interactions that characters have with the police, but that’s not the primary focus.

The series looks to a larger family narrative dealing with its own secrets as the crux of its storytelling. Who is and isn’t family is explored, and the foster system comes into play. By the middle of the season, the series has leaped from the starting blocks and into really good and really scary mysteries that all build on each other.

Much like the first season, Them: The Scare is propelled by its cast. The acting is second to none, and every single moment hits emotional resonance because of the actors’ delivery of their lines and the physicality they bring to their roles. Detective Dawn is hardened by the world, ready to take care of her family, and loves her job—despite the reality that comes with being a Black woman cop in 1990s Los Angeles.

She has to navigate the world with distrust from her own community and racist remarks from the white men who should be her peers. She’s on the outside of it all but just trying to do something good. As Dawn, Deborah Ayorinde (the only returning lead actor from last season) showcases her versatility. Lucky and Dawn are radically different portraits of Black motherhood, and Ayorinde is deeply aware of that.

Pam Grier‘s Athena offers an emotional core for the story. She is the grandmother with her own hidden guilt. Grier is a veteran genre actor who excels at making the most of her role as the glue between the larger narrative points.

Joshua J. Williams‘s Kel Reeve is vulnerable. Suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder, it’s hard for him to separate his rituals from the impending supernatural threat that is closing in. He’s a sincere and heartfelt character who loves his family but has to handle the pressures of his mom’s, Dawn’s, job. While he receives much of the focus of the back half of the season, primarily the last few episodes, Williams is a standout. The young actor is emotive in every single way.

But if Dawn grounds the series’ best intentions, Luke James as Edmund Gaines holds onto its worst (in a great horror way). An antagonist that builds in intensity with each episode James delivers a remarkably terrifying performance. But not one devoid of empathy.

As the audience, you feel for Edmund even when you fear him. As one of two distinct storylines, when they converge toward the season’s end, Edmund’s importance grows. Edmund embodies the horror genre and does so with grounding. There is a tragedy in him, as there is with most horror antagonists, but James’s performance rises above any of the superficial moments the trope he embodies may put forward.

In addition to the jaw-dropping ensemble cast, Them: The Scare is visually gorgeous. The use of red, particularly throughout the season, tracks the atmosphere of fear each character is experiencing. The more the vermillion invades the screen, the worse of a time we’re about to see. Its expert production design and cinematography have to be commended.

It is true that Them: The Scare vastly improves on the first season and tries its best to do more than traumatize viewers with each subsequent episode. That said, it still has some of the same issues regarding showing trauma on screen. The violence that is created in Them: The Scare is sometimes too much to keep looking at, and at times, it loses its grip on the cultural commentary.

However, on the other side of the eight-episode season, it does find a grounding in the end. While some brutal moments feel like a sledgehammer to the chest, none carry the wonton cruelty of the first season’s Episode 5. For that, I’m thankful.

However, the series does jump the shark as it begins to link the two seasons together, making me question if this is truly an anthology or one cohesive narrative. Them: The Scare could have excelled without shoehorning in the past, especially in the final episode. It’s a stumble that takes away from the narrative.

In the end, Them: The Scare isn’t without its struggles; however, it does show that the future of the anthology can use more than just supernatural racism and regular real-life racism as its horror villains. Bolstered by its incredibly gifted actors, Them: The Scare is a terrifying supernatural slasher that moves the anthology to the right track.

Them: The Scare is streaming now, exclusively on Prime Video.