‘Terror’ recalls wartime internment
Do horror and history mix? Or is popular genre fiction the only way to get through to a history-averse public?
Now in its second season and featuring a new story, “The Terror” (9 p.m., AMC, TV-14) recalls the treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It opens just weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Derek Mio stars as Chester Nakayama, an American-born young man eager to leave the small, insular Japanese enclave near San Francisco where his family operates a fishing boat and faces exploitation from gruff white fish wholesalers always ready to exploit the “foreigners.”
Not unlike Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” Chester sees his future amongst the American mainstream. But is that possible? A tea-leaf reader tells him he is a “sparrow in a swallow’s nest” and that he’ll never adjust to a place where he does not belong. Chester has a white girlfriend and, to use an old-fashioned expression, has gotten her into trouble. He has no idea that his woes have just begun.
Look for “Star Trek” legend George Takei as a village elder. As a young boy, Takei was among the many Japanese American children interned in camps.
Against the background of actual historical tragedy, “The Terror” piles on hints of evil forces arriving like a powerful wind from the east. War doesn’t arrive until the end of the first hour, but the body count mounts just the same.
Much like the first season, this “Terror” is as much about claustrophobia as spooky manifestations. We may be far removed from the Arctic setting of that story, but the pace remains glacial.
I’m still not convinced that a narrative so steeped in real historical tragedy needs added elements of supernatural gore. Do hints of mystic forces from the old country help debunk racist stereotypes about immigrants, or reinforce them?
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