Review: AMC’s NOS4A2 Adaptation Is Television As Psychic Vampire

The series visibly struggles to spin an enveloping atmosphere around its ideas.

NOS4A2
Photo: Zach Dilgard/AMC

The title of AMC’s NOS4A2 is seen on the vanity plate of a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith in the series’s first episode, immediately clarifying the specific nature of this vehicle, which saps the life from passengers in order to refresh its driver, Charlie Manx (Zachary Quinto). It also establishes the show’s somewhat cockeyed sense of horror, which filters decidedly non-spooky concepts through more sinister overtones. Christmas carols play as warnings of approaching doom, snowmen’s heads turn of their own accord, and the chief bad guy, of course, drives around with a license plate that sounds like a cheesy joke one might find inside a Halloween greeting card. If this interplay between creepy and eccentric worked in Joe Hill’s source novel, it’s hardly survived the transition to this drab, bloated adaptation.

When the camera first settles on Quinto, he’s buried under gobs of old-man makeup. His long gray wig is matted and greasy, his voice a laborious wheeze. Manx becomes young and handsome again by kidnapping children, luring them into the Wraith with promises of candy, presents, and a trip to the magical Christmasland. In the six episodes made available for review, what becomes of these children once he deposits them at Christmasland isn’t yet clear, though their newly gaunt faces and sharp teeth suggest they aren’t going to be partaking in any holiday cheer. Into this cycle of kidnappings rides Vic McQueen (Ashleigh Cummings), whose dirt bike lets her access a rickety magic bridge that leads her to lost things: a watch, a wayward father, perhaps even a missing child. The idea of that last one, naturally, sets her on an inevitable crash course with Manx and his vampiric Rolls-Royce.

The show’s idea of drama—aside from too many scenes where characters decide they’re outmatched by Manx and briefly give up—is mostly Vic’s preoccupation with the rest of her life. Dad (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is a violent drunk, Mom (Virginia Kull) wants her to scrub toilets instead of attend art school, and the only friends she has in Small Town, Massachusetts are a little girl, one of those guy friends with “notice me” written all over his face, and a middle-aged school janitor (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) who’s into comic books. If these seem like background details, NOS4A2, whose first season is meant to cover only the first third of Hill’s 700-page tome, doesn’t treat them as such. But to what end?

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Indeed, for as much space as the series allows its characters to develop idiosyncrasies and inner lives, no one is released from the confines of their archetypal functions. That Vic’s father truly cares about her and her future even though he hits his wife when he’s had too much to drink is what passes for complexity here. The show’s depictions of working-class struggle, small-town alienation, and abuse are so lacking in specificity that they feel more like shorthand for what it means to really be down and out. In NOS4A2, people say things like, “There’s good and bad in everyone,” as if nuance can be created by simply speaking it aloud.

Worse, these moments aren’t even worth gritting your teeth through to get to the supernatural intrigue that ostensibly anchors NOS4A2, which peels back mythology and mysteries over time in the build-up to some climactic Vic/Manx showdown. The problem here isn’t so much that the series is short on ideas: Manx’s Christmas iconography is a memorable calling card, and the show’s wider universe includes other supernatural flourishes, like a girl (Jahkara J Smith) who predicts the future with the tiles and rules of Scrabble (no proper nouns). It’s that NOS4A2 so visibly struggles to spin an enveloping atmosphere around these ideas.

Given how many Christmas-themed horror films, from Gremlins to Krampus, opt for some degree of comedy and camp, the show’s choice to play things straight is almost refreshing. But NOS4A2 is utterly devoid of dread or menace, and its artistry fails to compensate for its otherwise complete lack of dramatic momentum. Occasionally, the series flashes mildly perturbing images across the screen for a few seconds—bloodied bodies, faces contorted in pain—before returning to its usual gray daylight and the tight handheld shots that frame faces against it. The backgrounds fall out of focus with extreme frequency, in what seems to be some shaky depiction of disorientation and disconnection. But the result is less a world thick with foreboding, impenetrable smog than one seen through an irritating, bleary-eyed haze.

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Score: 
 Cast: Ashleigh Cummings, Zachary Quinto, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Jahkara J Smith, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Virginia Kull, Darby Camp, Rarmian Newton, Asher Miles Fallica, Dalton Harrod  Network: AMC  Buy: Amazon, Book

Steven Scaife

Steven Nguyen Scaife is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Buzzfeed News, Fanbyte, Polygon, The Awl, Rock Paper Shotgun, EGM, and others. He is reluctantly based in the Midwest.

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