Shows that are creepy and scary sometimes rely too heavily on those two factors and not enough on actually developing story and characters. A new mystery horror series from Thailand is built on an interesting premise, but its first episode goes more for atmosphere than actual story.
Opening Shot: We see the flashing dots of a digital clock that says “03:14.” A girl lies in her bed during a storm. Suddenly, the bed rises off the floor and the door slams shut. The girl keeps calling for her mother, and her mother tells her to open the door, but the girl runs and hides instead.
The Gist: It’s late at night, and Varee (Woranuch Bhirombhakdi), who has a bruise under her right eye, is driving with her daughter Min (Ploypaphas Fonkaewsiwaporn). It’s certainly not a standard road trip; as they pull into a gas station, Varee plays hide and seek with Min, essentially hiding her from detection. Someone keeps calling her, and she ignores every call.
Varee is fleeing from something, and she’s going to the mansion where she grew up, in a remote village full of rubber plantations. The Jarukanant house has been in her family for almost 100 years, but when the pair finally pull up to it, it’s apparent that the house hasn’t been inhabited in years. A neighbor, who brings Varee groceries and a new phone, tells Varee that the power might flicker out during storms, and the generator that is on the property hasn’t been turned on in 30 years.
The place is dark and creepy, even with the lights on. There’s a room in the house that’s locked; Varee’s mother never let her go in there. The first sign that something is amiss is that Varee tells Min to keep her drapes closed, but when she sees them open, Min claims she didn’t do it.
Soon Min is seeing someone standing behind her mother, in various rooms, and when the lights go out, things go thump. Varee, who really has nowhere else to go, tries to reassure Min that no one is there. But even Varee is seeing things; she walks into a study and sees a little girl in a mask drawing at the desk.
Then, during one storm, the bed lifts in Min’s room and the door slams and locks. By the time Varee gets into the room, Min has completely vanished.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Haunting Of Hill House, but creepier.
Our Take: Written by Woottidanai Intarakaset and Aummaraporn Phandinthong, Don’t Come Home starts really slowly, trading creepiness for actual story during its first episode. The shots are all extremely dark; even when Varee and Min spend the day at the beach, there seems to be a grey, washed-out quality to the scenery. Things go thump, and figures run into and out of view, or appear and disappear.
We get a tiny bit of insight into what Varee is running away from, given the fact that she has a gun in her purse and a bruise under one eye. She’s running from an abusive relationship, but the jury is still out about whether she actually harmed or killed her abuser. There isn’t a ton of information about her mom or her life in the mansion 30 years ago. But we’re sure that will come as things are revealed.
It takes an entire episode of Min sobbing that she wants to leave and Varee telling her daughter that they have no other choice but to stay for things to get going. We don’t really find out enough about Min or how close she is to her mother in the episode. Her disappearance could have happened much sooner; this way, we’d be introduced to Fah (Pitchapa Phanthumchinda), the police detective who will investigate the disappearance, much sooner, getting us more into the mysteries of the house.
The show still may become interesting as Fah and Varee uncover some secrets held in the house’s walls. But the first episode felt like it was supposed to be all creepiness and jump scares, and it wasn’t particularly effective.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Varee finally gets into Min’s room; the bed crashes to the floor, and Min is nowhere to be found.
Sleeper Star: The person who plays the little kid in the mask is pretty damn creepy, which is perfect for this show.
Most Pilot-y Line: During a power outage, Varee flips on the generator, which turns on, albeit briefly. How there’s useful gasoline or diesel in that generator after 30 years, we have no idea.
Our Call: SKIP IT. The first episode is too slow, and too repetitive, to keep moving forward.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.