As we head into the Holiday season and look forward to what’s to come in the midseason programming line-up, a small, somewhat surprising, trend emerges: network television is taking a dark turn. Perhaps inspired by the success of cable’s The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, network TV has decided to venture into serialized horror with The Following (FOX), Cult (CW) and Hannibal (NBC).
The pilot was sent out this summer and we attended a press event to screen the second episode of The Following last night. We can confirm that this psychological chiller continues to be far closer in tone to one of cable’s adult-themed offerings than 90% of what the networks have on deck. Series creator and executive producer Kevin Williamson is no stranger to horror. Williamson wrote Scream (and two of its sequels) and developed and executive produces The Vampire Diaries for The CW.
With The Following, however, Williamson takes a definitive step away from the teen slasher/teen-urban fantasy genres and into the arena of the adult thriller. The series stars Kevin Bacon as Ryan Hardy, a former FBI agent who is damaged and haunted by the last case he worked. Enter Joe Carroll (James Purefoy of Rome), a charismatic literature professor turned serial killer that Hardy brought to justice in 2004.
When Carroll escapes eight years later, Hardy is called in to consult. As the days following his escape progress, it becomes clear that while in jail Hardy has been able to amass a following of lost souls, would-be killers and sociopaths to do his long distance bidding.
Carroll, a failed suspense writer who is obsessed with the work of Edgar Allan Poe, explored Poe’s thesis that there is nothing so fascinating in the world as a beautiful woman dying by slaughtering 14 co-eds at the university where he taught.
He now intends to create a living work of art by “casting” former agent Hardy as the reluctant hero in a story of his own design. The “story” will include a widespread outbreak of serial killers all looking to Carroll for their marching orders.
With The Following, Williamson brings the tropes of literary suspense fiction to life and blends them with what, to me, is an even more frightening phenomena: cults.
The series has been crafted so that it can follow the over-arching storyline of Carroll’s game of cat-and-mouse with Hardy, and still deliver a monster-of-the-week (monster in this case being “cult-member”) procedural structure that networks seem to favor.
We’ll have a full pilot review closer to the premiere of The Following in January. For now, just know that in a sea of the familiar, tried and true, The Following makes an effort to offer its audience something unique and in moments, genuinely scary.
The Following will premiere Monday, January 21 at 9/8c on FOX.
Roth Cornet is an Entertainment Editor for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @JRothC and IGN at Roth-IGN.
Source : ign[dot]com
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