The genealogy was contrived but also necessary for the plot. They could have made it more realistic but that would have required much more storytelling and a much longer genealogy sequence that wouldn’t have fit this show.
Contrived is to be expected for a comedy horror. You can’t go expecting rigid logic when both genres deliberately exaggerate.
What if the Lovecraftian horror that resides under the island loves contrivances?
Yeah. Widows Bay shows that Ghostbusters (2016) was Paul Feig’s fault. She wrote that as well.
Off topic a bit, but Paul Feig is a middling director at best.
I never gave that movie a second of my attention but I agree with that assessment since I love parks and rec and now this.
Ghostbusters (2016) is a very strange movie. Melissa McCarthy is more or less the straight man for the jokes happening around her. She’s so funny normally. Everything else…feels partly like improv. Feig seemed to suggest he let them improv a lot, but this movie is out of control.
To be honest, they made two more recent Ghostbuster films as well and they were also bad, but for different reasons.
I finally watched all episodes and loved it. I laughed more than any other horror series. But what really made it was the characters. If a series has one or two great characters, I’m happy. This had at least six: Tom, Wyck, Patricia, Rosemary, Dale, even the doctor in his limited time.
I originally assumed Kenny was the 9th victim, because the storm ended immediately after he was taken. That would suggest anyone killed counts; they don’t have to be specifically taken from the chair room.
But I can’t come up with 8 other deaths. Shep in episode 1, the pastor, the EMT (maybe?), the shaman… Ruth was definitely alive when the storm ended, although it’s unclear if she lasted much longer.
Maybe I missed a couple, but I don’t think there were 4 more. So now I think the 8 bells at the end means they still owe 8 sacrifices from the original 9.
You’re probably right. Without needing to go back over the show carefully, there’s this website that catalogues the deaths in a TV show, and if you ignore the pre-show deaths, the flashbacks, and the animals, it comes to six deaths known of and shown on-screen. Even if Ruth is dead, that still doesn’t come to nine, so I suppose it must be simply a single death that counts against the bell tolls so far.
It look liked there were a bunch of bullets of various calibres in the ashes, which I thought was a nice subtle nod to the “unstoppable killer” trope.
Yeah, it’s gotta be a sacrifice to the demon. It really goes right back to the trolley problem discussion. Do you do nothing and let the island kill off an unknown number of people? Or do you “pull the lever” and directly send the sacrifices to their death?
That’s a great point. I wouldn’t have gone in circles if I’d thought of that first.
As for the evil entity: people are on an island they can’t escape from, a single father has a complicated relationship with his son and is potentially willing to sacrifice others to save him, there’s an underground bunker with creepy old movies that reveal bits of the mystery…
The entity has to be the smoke monster, right?
This is just conjecture, and based on my familiarity with Lovecraft: I don’t think the smoke is an entity what I think is that this being just influences events rather than just appearing and wreaking havoc.
To another point the story only confirms that this evil entity wants sacrifices by a general warning system by causing fog and alerting the residents of desired input of said sacrifices. So it raises other interesting questions about all the other supernatural things that happen. What’s the deal with the Hotel and the Clown and the specific room? What was the Necronomicon-like book’s deal? How does someone get possessed to take a mask and commit murder on certain targets? Was the sea-hag 1 and done? Is the entity responsible for it all? Of course not everything needs to be explained in a story like this but I think it furthers the intrigue of the world building.
I agree. But in case it wasn’t clear, my comment was a Lost reference.
Gotcha, I never saw it. 
They may or may not create an explanation but to me they are there because they are horror tropes to have fun with and any explanation is a second thought, if it ever happens.
I agree, the story that they wanted to tell was of the curse of the warrens and the thing in the basement.
I would enjoy it more if they tie it into the overall plot, instead of general homages to the genre. I won’t go Charlie at the cork board about it. I’m happy either way.
It’s a haunt. What more explanation do we need?
Sure 'nuff big dog. I find it fun and open to discussion but we all seem to be in the same head space about it
FWIW, I was just thinking it could be like the entity in The Endless (an indie film that I cannot recommend highly enough—you can also watch its predecessor, Resolution first if you prefer, but I consider The Endless the superior film and I ended it up seeing it first myself. Actually, I think the best order is The Endless, Resolution, The Endless).
Maybe it just likes fucking with people, riffing off horror tropes is how it gets its jollies off, particularly when the island’s population are slouching on feedings?
ETA: And an even more obvious parallel might be Pennywise the Clown and how it feeds off Derry. Sure, it does some direct consumption, but it also causes a lot of mayhem just by its influence.