NOS4A2 Season 1 Review (TV Series, 2020) #31DaysofHorror
content warning: gore, violence against women, child abuse
NOS4A2 is a fascinating property to explore. The novel by Joe Hill is one of the strangest horror novels I’ve ever encountered. Joe Hill writes brutal weird fiction and this novel is among his harshest work. It’s a cross-country and cross-dimension horror story about a monstrous man known as Charlie Manx. He drives a car, a Wraith, with the license plate NOS4A2, luring children into his vehicle with promises of a trip to Christmasland.
Meanwhile, Vic is a teenager who discovers the ability to locate anything that is missing by riding through a covered bridge that was destroyed a decade before. Maggie is a librarian who scries for the answer to any question with a bag of Scrabble tiles. There’s a whole lot more, but these are the main characters circling each other, connected by chance to the disappearance of children across the country.
When I heard this was being adapted to a TV show, I had concerns. It is a cruel and bleak narrative. That’s Joe Hill’s perspective on horror. The world is fascinating, but the story spends large spans of time building the world and mood. The plot is great, but it’s not always the driving force of the story.
The characters also suffer unfairly cruel or kind fates for using their inexplicable powers. We know that Charlie Manx is a monster, but he only grows stronger as time goes on. The good people trying to save the children only suffer for trying to do good.
It did not take long for my fears to be allayed. NOS4A2 works as a TV show. I think it might even work better as a TV show. Changes are made along the way that bring the story into a clearer focus. The jumps in the narrative split by chapters in the novel happen in closer proximity as the story shifts from scene to scene. Seeing and hearing the clear differences in locations makes the form of the story very clear.
The cast, in particular, is spectacular. I knew straight away that one role was perfectly cast. Jahkara Smith, at the time better known as satirical YouTuber Sailor J, is a natural fit for the heroic psychic librarian with an off-beat style. Zachary Quinto is also well cast as Charlie Manx. It’s the kind of charismatic and cruel villain he’s made a hallmark of his career since Heroes.
Ashleigh Cummings is the young actor taking on the heavy lifting of Vic. She’s everything the character is meant to be in the story. She’s smart, kind, and tough when she needs to be. This character always tries to do the right thing for everyone in her life and is often left disappointed, if not devastated, by the results. It’s a tricky character to make feel authentic and she succeeds in every way.
NOS4A2 is everything and nothing I imagined it would be. All the subtle little details that Joe Hill scatters along the way in his novels becomes the driving visual language of the series. The result is haunting and upsetting in all the ways the story is meant to be.
NOS4A2 is available to stream on Shudder.
