ids' WB! brings its first live-action series to the screen with the spooky anthology The Nightmare Room, which gives young teen viewers a trip into a Twilight Zone-type place where nightmares come true.
In the series' premiere episode, "Tangled Web," a teen named Josh (Berfield) has a lie for every occasion, and he doesn't hesitate to use them. His math teacher has called his parents to talk to them about his continually missing math homework, but Josh talks his father into giving him one more
chance.
At school, Josh isn't about to change his ways, and he starts his math homework just as class is about to begin. He's worried for a minute until a substitute named Mr. Farber (Carradine) walks in. Josh relaxes, because he knows he has it made. After all, what can a sub do to him? When Mr. Farber approaches Josh to collect the math homework, Josh tells him a whopper of a story. According to Josh, his house was broken into by escaped prisoners wearing clown masks, who took his DVD and, by coincidence, his math homework. The other kids in the class laugh at the story, but Mr. Farber is
serious. He simply says that since Josh looks like an honest person, "if he says something is true, it must be true."
Josh thinks he's off the hook, but suddenly strange things start to happen. Snakes from Mr. Freeman's science class appear in his backpack mysteriously, and a made-up scary big brother named Frank takes care of a bully. But when escaped prisoners wearing clown masks actually do rob his home and steal his DVD player, with his homework sitting on top of it, Josh realizes that he has a problem. It is a "tangled web" indeed for Josh, as one lie leads to another, and the dishonest teen is taught a lesson he'll never forget—if he can survive it.
Dark
dreams older kids will enjoy
Inspired by the pen of Goosebumps' R.L. Stine, The Nightmare Room is a dark and scary place where young teens face their worst nightmares. Sometimes they survive the nightmare. Sometimes they never escape. But there's always a lesson to be learned, and the voice of R.L. Stine delivers a wrap-up at the end of each episode.
"Tangled Web" offers the creepiness of a Nightmare Room story, but it also has a lot of humor as Josh's lies become increasingly involved and ridiculous, involving everything from ninjas to the professional wrestler Sting. Berfield is smooth as the dishonest Josh, and Carradine puts in an
eerie turn as the bizarre substitute teacher.
"Tangled Web" was one of two episodes available for preview, along with "Scareful What You Wish For," which was used as a sneak preview in August and will run again later in the season. Both episodes are surprisingly dark and not for the little ones. However, older kids and young teens should enjoy
the dilemmas the featured teen faces each week. R.L. Stine has a way of weaving real-life situations with the supernatural that has given him the reputation as "the Stephen King for kids." The Nightmare Room does a good job at bringing his stories to life within the format of a 30-minute anthology show.
The series will feature familiar kid and adult actors, and episodes are based both on Stine's books and on original stories written especially for the series. While it's hard to tell why any show needs seven executive producers, the writing is good and the production values are excellent. Anthology
shows have a tendency to be inconsistent, but it's too soon to tell whether The Nightmare Room will suffer from that problem.
