After I finished watching the series Colony, I was going to start seeing another series that was having high ratings and sounded interesting, but as it turned out, after watching the pilot episode, I struggled to continue with the second episode and so I decided to browse through other series when I stumbled into this one. I remember seeing the trailer to it in cable TV earlier and was amazed with how scary it seemed. Yes, this was a supernatural horror series. So better be ready with some scary scenes. Now let us get on with the series.
Brief Story Line
In the small town of Rome, a man named Kyle Barnes (Patrick Fugit - Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant) had returned back to his home town and staying alone in his old house. His adoptive sister named Megan (Wrenn Schmidt - 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi) felt that it was time for him to start getting out of the house. It would be revealed later that Kyle was having a dark and brutal history involving his ex wife Allison (Kate Lyn Sheil) and his child Amber which made him felt miserable and afraid of going out in the open.
Meanwhile the local reverend named John Anderson (Philip Glenister - Prey miniseries) was kept busy during his spare time exorcising demons from some of the member of his congregation. Kyle was one of the success story from his old time when many years ago, his mother was helped by Anderson and was freed from demonic possession.
Megan's husband Mark Holter (David Denman - The Office TV series) was not a fan of Kyle as he believed that he was a bad person due to his old background. However he was also appreciative of Kyle's help to Megan. Mark worked as a police officer under Chief Giles (Reg E. Cathey - Fantastic Four 2015 version, House of Cards TV series etc) who was also best friends with Reverend Anderson.
The focus in pilot episode was the work of Anderson together with Kyle to exorcise demons. It was shown that Kyle somehow had some kind of "power" / "ability" to make those demons afraid and leave the body it possessed. It was actually quite scary during those scenes. Things also got complicated when a mysterious person also came to Rome. Later on we would find out that his name was Sydney (Brent Spiner - Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series, Independence Day and its sequel etc).
So what was the dark history Kyle had earlier? How come he had this kind of "ability" and why were there so many demonic possessions in that city? Who was Sydney and what was his role? Find them all in this quite interesting series.
End of Brief Story Line
This was quite a short series. One season only having 10 episodes with each episode lasting for about 45 minutes to almost 1 hour and surprisingly this was a Cinemax original series. If I remember correctly Cinemax cable TV usually focus on actions but this time it created an interesting supernatural horror series. As I mentioned earlier, the series was about demonic possession and the exorcism related to it. However, after a very promising and scary pilot episode, the subsequent episodes did not provide as many scary moments as I would have liked. During the middle episodes, the focus was shifting more towards drama with the story of Kyle, Allison and Amber, plus the character development of Reverend Anderson. The mystery surrounding Sydney and also Megan plus Mark's relationship also took some development. Only in the 9th episode and season finale that the series pace picked up.
It was a good thing that the season finale was fantastic and created an intriguing feeling to continue to second season. If it was not that exciting, I may have stopped and no longer watch the second season. Since the 2nd season already started and finished in early 2017, I would definitely watch this in the very near future to find out what would happen next.
Be warned though that if you would like to see lots of scary exorcism processes, there would not be that many. Especially towards the latter episodes. But the mystery was actually quite intriguing for me. So if you are expecting a series of multiple exorcism in every episode then be warned that you would not get it. It was more like a long story that would continue on for 10 episodes, rather than a stand alone case per episode.
The special effects were pretty good for a TV series. The dark tone was expected for such series. The main characters however were not actors/actresses with experience in major movies / TV series, except for Brent Spiner and Reg E. Cathey who provided good supporting roles. There were also some brief love making scenes which were surprisingly quite daring for the two female leads. Due to its horrifying nature and those scenes, I believe that this series would be most suitable for adults.
Now if you are looking for series involving dark mystery and some scary images with only 10 episodes per season, then this would be a perfect option. But if you are looking for nonstop scary series, then it would not be too your liking. The choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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