ox kicks off its long-awaited Twilight Zone-style anthology series, Night Visions, with a special two-hour premiere hosted by actor/musician Henry Rollins. Each hour-long episode will feature two separate stories that range from psychological to supernatural terror.
In the opening story, "The Passenger List" (written by Billy Brown and Dan Angel, directed by Yves Simoneau), an investigator of aviation disasters (Quinn) sees a plane crash and rushes to investigate. When he starts to see strange things, he begins to worry that his daughter might have been on the plane.
In the tale "The Bokor" (written by Billy Brown and Dan Angel, directed by Keith Gordon), three young medical students discover that the cadaver they are working on has the tattoo of an evil voodoo priest. One student, Diane (Mathis), explains that the tattoo keeps him from returning to life. When the body disappears, along with Diane, the remaining two search for her, but what they find isn't anything they ever expected.
Radio shock jock Tom Fowler (Phillips) dares his late-night listeners to tell him something really scary in the story "Dead Air" (written by Erin Maher and Kay Reinol, directed by Jefery Levy). Alone at the station, he gets a call from a college girl who seems truly scared. She's alone at her sorority house and strange things are beginning to happen. When the same things begin to happen to Fowler, he learns the true meaning of fear.
Finally, in the tale "Renovation" (written by Billy Brown and Dan Angel, directed by Brian Dennehy), a family moves into the perfect fixer-upper. They aren't worried about the fact that a gruesome murder happened in the house 30 years before. But as soon as they move in, the husband (Bellows) begins to hear voices and see things. He tries to work on the house, but the former owner has his own plans.
Long on chills, light on gore
Night Visions is one of the best horror anthology series to hit the tube in a long, long time. The first four tales of terror run the gamut from psychological suspense to supernatural horror, and what's truly surprising is that all the stories are consistent in style, tone and mood.
This consistency is almost unheard of in anthology television because each story has a different group of people making it. However, series creators Brown and Angel (who wrote three of the stories) seem to be on a mission to craft Twilight Zone-type tales, and to that end they keep their focus on the psychological elements of suspense without giving in to the easier and sloppier gore that might add shock value but rarely adds a chill down the spine.
The focus on the psychological aspect creates a much scarier scenario, adding tension simply from the look on an actor's face or the realization that things are much worse than they ever could have imagined. The stories that make up Night Visions aren't particularly unique or surprising. But what makes these first episodes so good is that they're not about the twist endings, they're about the journeys to that end.
The production values are quite solid and the cast is filled with familiar faces. Rollins' introductions to the stories are so short you barely notice them, and he's brought back at the end of each tale for an even shorter wrap-up. There's the feeling he's supposed to be a younger, hipper Rod Serling. That doesn't happen, because his time on-screen is so brief, but he doesn't take anything away from the series either. The stories are tightly written, so that each tale inevitably leads to the climactic twist ending. It's all-round good television, and a perfect chill for a hot summer night.
