October 2, 2021
Crockett Island was home to only 127 inhabitants. It only two ferries a day that connected it with the mainland. One day, substitute priest Fr. Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater) arrived in town. He was filling in for elderly Monsignor Pruitt who had been taken ill on his Holy Land tour. From his very first Mass, Fr. Paul immediately displayed uncommon passion to his evangelical mission, gaining the admiration of loyal churchgoers.
Writer-director Mike Flanagan took his time to introduce us to the people on the island. There was the Flynn family, Ed (Henry Thomas), Annie (Kristin Lehman) and teenager Warren (Igby Rigney), whose eldest son Riley (Zach Gilford) was just released from prison. There was the Scarborough family, Mayor Wade (Michael Trucco) and Dolly (Crystal Balint), with their wheelchair-bound daughter Leeza (Annarah Cymone).
There was the new Muslim sheriff Omar Hassan (Rahul Kohli) and his son Ali (Rahul Abburi). There was Dr. Sarah Gunning (Annabelle Gish), who lived with her old mother with dementia, Mildred (Alex Essoe). There was Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), the schoolteacher who was single and pregnant. And lording it over the entire community as its self-appointed moral guardian, there was the fanatical zealot Beverly Keane (Samantha Sloyan).
Each episode of the series was named from Biblical books: Genesis, Psalms, Proverbs, Lamentations, Gospels, Acts of the Apostles and Revelations. Since Fr. Paul's arrival, strange things began happening on the island, from the carcasses of cats on the beach to the inexplicable events happening to residents. These mysteries would peak in the midnight mass for the Easter Vigil, when big secrets of resurrection were revealed to the town.
Flanagan gave all the major characters their own lengthy philosophical monologues. Some of these slow speeches may come across pretentious and unrealistic. Hamish Linklater's Fr. Paul Hill was very sympathetic and his words as he delivered them sounded genuinely inspirational. The other memorable performer was Samantha Sloyan, whose hateful Bev Keane will be long remembered as one of the most despicable characters on TV ever.
Catholic rites, traditions, beliefs and philosophies are very much integral to the plot of this quasi-horror series. For practically every episode, there was a beautiful Catholic church hymn being sung to accompany scenes. For a Catholic viewer like me, it was unsettling, and even upsetting, to hear Bible verses being inaccurately cited and sanctimoniously manipulated (by Bev Keane specifically) to promote and justify bloody horrifying beings and events. 6/10.
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