If you miss 'Game of Thrones' you should watch AMC's 'The Terror' - a historical horror series critics are calling a '10-episode nightmare'

Carrie Wittmer

Apr 6, 2018, 18:52 IST

If you miss 'Game of Thrones' you should watch AMC's 'The Terror' - a historical horror series critics are calling a '10-episode nightmare'

AMC

AMC's "The Terror" is an amazing new limited series starring some familiar faces from "Game of Thrones" and "Mad Men."
This historical fiction series gives a sci-fi horror twist on real people who went on an expedition to the Arctic and never returned.
It's one of the best new shows of 2018 so far.

AMC's historical fiction series "The Terror" is the perfect way to satisfy the hole "Game of Thrones" has left in your TV watching schedule. It's one of the best new TV shows of the year so far, and critics are raving about it.

Set in the Canadian Arctic, "The Terror" follows a British expedition stuck in ice, haunted by a horrifying creature. It's terrifying and impeccably made - from the sets to the costumes to the performances. It stars some of your favorite British actors, including some from "Game of Thrones" like Ciarán Hinds (Mance Rayder), Tobias Menzies (Edmund Tully), and Clive Russell (The Blackfish). Jared Harris, who played Lane Pryce on AMC's "Mad Men," also stars.

The limited series, which premiered on AMC March 26, is based on the 2007 Dan Simmons novel of the same name. The novel and the show are fictionalized accounts of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition. In 1845, Franklin (Hinds on the show) led the HMS Terror and HMS Erebus on an Arctic expedition to explore the Northwest Passage. After a few men died, both ships got stuck in ice, and no one, of 129, ever returned. There's always been a lot of speculation behind what happened to the lost explorers, and "The Terror" imagines that they were hunted by a supernatural being. In real life, the remains of the ships weren't found until fairly recently: the Terror in 2016, and the Erebus in 2014.

"The Terror," which manages to look horrifying and gorgeous at the same time, was (amazingly) not shot outside, though a majority of the series is set in the open Arctic. Most of what you see is just stunning visual effects.

Here are some of the best things critics have said about "The Terror," that will hopefully get you to stop everything you are doing and watch it:

“A lavish event series that could be called 'Master and Commander' Meets 'The Thing.' It's not quite as exciting as that pitch makes it sound, but it is a show that builds up steam around the fourth episode.”

"As the title suggests, 'The Terror' is interested in fear itself, how it transforms us, how it turns us cruel and savage . . . it conjures a piercing dread, both familiar and inconceivable; a portrait of man and nature at their cruelest and coldest."

"'The Terror' can be scary, but it's real achievement is climatological. The freeze is tangible. When you watch it, wear a sweater."

"'The Terror' isn't trying to impress its prestigeness upon you by making everything as nasty and extreme as possible. These may be humans under almost unimaginable pressure, but they're still recognizably human."

"Nerve-racking suspense, a deceptively gorgeous landscape and the deeply developed characters lend a rich, big-screen quality to 'The Terror's' hourlong episodes."

"This grueling but rewarding 10-part series from Ridley Scott's company is like a Masterpiece version of a classic horror movie: literate and philosophical, yet shocking and terrifically scary."

"David Kajganich and Soo Hugh's 10-episode nightmare is a work of harrowing historical fiction, one in which supernatural menace looms large over the proceedings, and yet is ultimately less threatening-or terrifying-than man himself."

"Two hours, four, even six, sure, but ten? You have to be a masochist to keep coming back ... I came back."

"There's an impressive confidence to the storytelling that will grab viewers with a taste for sophisticated horror."

"It's a thriller where everything contains cruel intention -- be it the wind, the ice, the water, what have you. The story leans into the superstitious nature of sea-fairing men and ramps up the fear factor with Inuit lore and shamanism."

"A terrifying story of doomed characters will draw in viewers, but they'll stay for the show's cinematography."

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