Have You Been Watching...? The Terror: Infamy

 

Have You Been Watching…? The Terror: Infamy

The Terror is an American anthology series, where each season is a self-contained tale. Each has it’s own cast, storyline, beginning, middle and end with no threads run through tying them all together. “Infamy” is the second series of The Terror. I was not enticed by the plot of series 1, two ships stuck in the ice between 1845-1848, based on the true story of Captain Sir John Franklin’s “lost expedition” to the Arctic. This second series appealed much more, due to its Japanese horror influence (The original Ring movie is one of my all time favourites).

Infamy is historical again, but this time set in the second world war, days before the Pearl Harbour attack. The historical side of the series shows a side of American history I was previously not aware of but makes it all the more horrific and not just in the supernatural way.

The cast of the 10 part epic includes scifi stalwarts such as George Takei (Star Trek), Hiro Kanagawa (Star Trek Discovery, iZombie, Man in the High Castle), C Thomas Howell (with a strong of genre credits to his name!) and Naoko Mori (Torchwood & Dr Who) and relates the story of the Nakayama family, just prior to and immediately after the Pearl Harbour attack in 1941. Following the attack, the American authorities round-up any Japanese person, families, children and all, and intern them in prison camps. Our main protagonist is budding photo-journalist Chester Nakayama, an American born to Japanese parents. It IS important to recognise that given what happens to the family as the series progresses. In the midst of these human rights tragedies comes a spectre from Japanese folklore, terrorising the Japanese community and taking a particular interest in Chester. Our protagonist is played by Derek Mio, whose credits include the movie GBF, Gay Best Friend. He is great as Chester, conveying the despair, devotion, helplessness and heroism. He is very much the backbone of the series and he carries it well.

The series begins with a suicide and continues in a slow build up from there as events overtake the family. As the story progresses, the gore does increase, so be warned! It might be slow paced, but believe me, every second is watchable, both for the antics of the spirit, and the behaviours of the authorities toward innocent people who have done nothing wrong, other than be from, or born to, a different race. “Any drop of Japanese blood” is a phrase used within the series. Historically, some 120,000 people of Japanese descent were imprisoned in these camps with about two thirds of them being actual American citizens. You will have to forgive my accuracy with these facts as I said previously, this phase of American history is new to me, and I gleaned this info from the world wide web, so it’s open to debate. Either way, it happened, and it is still horrific.

The series is very much a jigsaw puzzle and as the pieces start to fall into place, it all begins to make sense. This is one of those series that the ending doesn’t disappoint. In fact, there’s very little about The Terror: Infamy that disappointed at all. We begin to see everything come together the same time Chester does, so we don’t skip ahead, and the series works better because of this. Also, stay with the end credits, you won’t regret it.

Fans of The Terror will no doubt already know that it is executively produced by none other than Ridley Scott and it shows. The cinematography and settings are wonderfully realised, be it the grit of a prison camp or a period fishing village. I won’t say too much more as I don’t want to spoil things, but it is as great to look at as it is horrific.

You might not want to watch this in a dark room on your own, but if you do have the time, you might want to consider investing it in The Terror: Infamy, especially if you are as fan of Japanese horror.

Year: 2019

Episode count: 10

Season count: 1

Availability: Currently free to stream on BBCiplayer (as of July 2022).