- Run Time: Around 50 Minutes per episode
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3E1URhCR60
Episode 3: The Autopsy
- Directed by David Prior
- Written by David S. Goyer, Michael Shea, Guillermo Del Toro
- Stars F. Murray Abraham, Glynn Turman, Luke Roberts
Some men work in the coal mine. A man no one recognizes comes down the elevator and throws out a device that explodes.
We cut to shots of the town, with signs up for many missing persons and some grave markers for people who died in the mine. Dr. Carl Winters gets off the bus; he doesn’t look healthy. He stops in at the sheriff’s station, and he’s old friends with Sheriff Nate. Winters wants to know what’s going on; nine men are dead, and he’s here to do an autopsy to find out what happened.
Nate warns Carl that he’ll never get to the bottom of this story. Two months ago, a man went missing. Then another. Six people in a month disappeared. Eventually, they found one decomposed, butchered, bloodless body. Nate assigned two hunters to keep an eye on the body, which looked to be a cache for later feeding. Later, the hunters both disappeared as well.
We get a flashback to Abel, the first victim, running into a guy he thinks he knows. The man says he’s Joe Allen, not the man the first victim thought. Joe hypnotizes Abel to make an excuse to leave with him. Nate says that Joe was really Sykes, a man who went missing nine months ago after going into the woods to watch a meteor shower.
Nate and a deputy checked out Joe/Sykes’s room at the boarding house. There’s a strange round, organic thing with hairs on it. It makes a strange purring sound, and the landlady tells them that Joe said he found it in the woods after the meteor storm. Joe then breaks into the police car, grabs the alien ball-thing and runs down into the mine, where the thing explodes, as we saw. BOOM!
Back in the present, Nate and Carl go for a drive. Carl admits that he has terminal stomach cancer. They go to a refrigeration facility where all the bodies from the mine are stored. Nate gets to work doing his autopsies alone.
The first victim, Miller, has all the signs of being buried alive. “Run. Get out now!” He hears from nowhere. He starts on Jackson, the next victim; he has a strange wound, and his insides are shriveled and drained of blood. The third victim, Brady, has a similar wound, also without blood.
Suddenly, the power goes out. Carl starts getting creeped out by the bodies, even though he’s done this hundreds of times. Carl watches as Joe Allen gets up off the gurney and starts coming for him. “Help me. Starving. I am a traveler. My true form is small and hideous to you,” he says. He wanted to destroy his ship; he says they must not be understood. Livestock must not understand what devours it.
The alien wants to take over Carl’s body since the doctor gets bodies delivered to him all the time— food without hunting! The alien will transfer himself from Joe to Carl. Carl says that their kind are nothing but parasites.
Joe cuts himself open as if he were doing an autopsy on himself. He pulls out the little squid-like alien inside him. As the little alien pulls out of Joe, Joe dies. Carl grabs the scalpel from Joe’s cold, dead hand and writes a message on himself in blood before stabbing himself in the ears and eyes. The alien has no senses of his own, and this way, the alien will be blind and deaf. Carl also cuts his own throat— just a little. Enough to be slowly fatal.
We watch the alien take over Carl and merge with his synapses. Carl and the alien talk; Carl mentions that the voice recorder caught Joe’s whole confession.
Morning comes, Nate arrives. He finds Carl’s body with “Play Tape. Burn Me.” written in blood.
Commentary
The gore and autopsy scenes here are very realistic. We see pretty early on that the “bomb” is some kind of alien organic thing. Where it goes from there is more unpredictable. The alien’s explanation and speechifying are really good as well. These aliens are not nice people!
It’s great how old Carl outsmarted the “genius” alien invader.
Episode 4: The Outside
- Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour
- Written by Haley Z. Boston, Emily Carroll, Guillermo Del Toro
- Stars Kate Micucci, Martin Starr, Dan Stevens
We see that it’s Christmas in the suburbs. Stacey watches TV as she eats microwaved chicken. She hears something in the basement and goes down there with an ax. She checks out the whole house, but there’s no one there. She calls Officer Keith at the police station; this seems to be a regular occurrence, and he knows her well. We soon see that he’s her husband.
The next day at the bank, we see that Stacey is just plain weird. She draws her “Secret Santa” name, and it’s Gina.
Later, Stacey shoots a duck and does the full taxidermy thing on it. Keith comes home, and he mentions that Stacey hates Gina. Why would she want to go to the Secret Santa party? Stacey is really jealous of Gina and wants to see the inside of her house, so she plans to go to the party tomorrow anyway.
She goes to the party and all the catty women from work are there. They all talk about vibrators and fillers. It’s eventually time for “not-so-secret-santa.” Stacey is surprised that it’s not really a secret. Everyone gets nice gifts from Alo Glo, a skin cream that all the women seem obsessed with. Stacey gives Gina her gift, and Gina is surprised to find a stuffed duck inside. Gina is appalled, but polite about it.
They all play with the Alo Glo cream while gushing over how wonderful it feels, but it doesn’t seem to work on Stacey. She does turn red though; it’s a rash or reaction to the Alo Glo and goes home early.
Keith says Stacey just has sensitive skin, but Stacey takes it personally. As she watches an infomercial for Alo Glo that night, the tube of cream empties itself on her living room table. The man on the screen promises— pretty much everything for users of the cream. Stacey just giggles, but then the TV starts talking to her personally. He promises her “A seat at the table.”
She complains that she got a rash, but he says she has to use the whole bottle. “It hurts when it works. The skin itches as it heals. You have a lot of healing to do, Stacey,” he says. She picks up the phone and orders more Alo Glo. Then she uses the rest of the tube.
The next morning, she gets a delivery from Alo Glo. She hides the huge box in the basement. She calls in sick to work; her rash is worse than last night. She tells Keith “It’s a process. Healing itches.” He insists there’s nothing wrong with her, but she thinks there is. She just wants him to be supportive in her coming changes. He doesn’t really understand but goes along with it.
She uses the cream. She uses a lot of the cream. That night, the TV man talks to her again. He swears the cream is doing its job; you need to let it grow, he insists. “You have to go all the way.”
She goes into the basement, and all the tubes of Alo Glo open up and start squishing out. The Alo Glo expands overnight. Something is growing in the middle of the puddle.
When Keith gets home the next day, Stacey has gotten even worse. He wants her to go see a doctor, but she insists that it’s working. “Why can’t you be excited for me? It’s fixing me!”
Stacey goes down into the basement to find a human-shaped figure standing where the Alo Glo used to be. Sort of a lotion golem. She touches it, and they kiss.
She comes upstairs with one of her taxidermy scalpels. Keith gives her a pep talk. “You’re perfect,” he says. “You’re going to stop this nonsense right now.” She stabs him in the forehead with the scalpel; it’s a gusher! Before he can bleed too much, she finishes him off with the ax.
Stacey finds the Alo Glo woman in her bathroom. The woman gets into the tub and turns into a liquid. Stacey climbs in after her and bathes in the Alo Glo. It swallows her up.
Later that night, she gets out of the tub, covered in goo. She scrapes off the residue and her skin is perfect underneath. She has nice teeth and her eyes are straight, even her shape seems to have changed. She looks radiant now and confident. What to do about dead Keith though? Time for some taxidermy! He looks so natural there in front of the TV.
She fixes herself up and dresses well now before going to work. She opens the door to the bank, and everyone stares. Everyone is amazed at her transformation. Now she fits right in. And all the other women are jealous of her.
Commentary
They have doctors for when you get a rash like that. Doctors that will tell you to stop using the cream you’re allergic to. But on the other hand, this apparently was no ordinary cream.
Kate Micucci has some great makeup and prosthetic work throughout the story. The rash and peeling skin are really gross, and it even had me itching and scratching before it was done.