It’s a feat that few shows have been able to accomplish in even one season of hour-long episodes, let alone over 30 short minutes per episode across four years. Each of these directors masterfully navigates the delicate tonal tightrope required of Servant’s four consistently claustrophobic seasons, eliciting gasps of humor and horror in equal measure. Among Servant’s ranks aren’t just Shyamalan and his daughter Ishana, but Raw and Titane’s Julia Ducournau Goodnight Mommy and The Lodge’s Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala Kitty Green of The Assistant and Carlo Mirabella-Davis of Swallow, among many others. In an unparalleled coup for the show, the directors who brought these moments to life rank among the best horror filmmakers. By turning any outsider into a potential threat, a paranoid tension is woven through every moment of Servant. Meanwhile, Dorothy’s drive to live her life and raise Jericho continuously endangers Sean, Julian, and eventually Leanne’s facade from within. Still many hide in plain sight, disguised as new neighbors, party clowns, or rival nannies, making any new character immediately suspect. Its members are drawn to Leanne like moths to a flame, with its most obsessive patrons placing their faith on full display (most notably the demonically bug-eyed Boris McIver as “Uncle George.”). The series simultaneously creates a vast, shadowy world just beyond the Turners’s walls, where the ghosts of Leanne’s past manifest in the Church of Lesser Saints. Basgallop, Shyamalan, and a roster of horror creatives craftily pick at viewers’s nerves, drawing out skin-crawling moments in surprising ways without leaving the confines of the Turner family’s Philadelphia brownstone. Her biggest act upends Sean, Dorothy, and Julian’s lives for better and for worse, as she uses the doll to resurrect a living Jericho.ĭespite the joy of having his family back, Sean struggles to keep the truth about Jericho’s resurrection from Dorothy-and must conspire with Julian and Leanne to keep the reunited family on track as much as possible.Īcross its four seasons, Servant effectively delivers its central mystery through half-hour episodes that deftly balance traumatizing tension and delightful absurdity. Leanne quickly reveals she is much more than she seems, able to control everything from the weather to bugs to human actions, apparently by chance. Leanne takes the doll immediately to heart, much to Sean’s surprise-as well as that of Dorothy’s philandering brother, Julian (Rupert Grint), who also holds secrets of his own. While Sean admits to Leanne that this charade is absurd, the doll is the only thing that’s brought Dorothy out of her previously catatonic state. However, “Jericho” is actually a doll, a surrogate for their recently deceased baby. Servant’s premise is deceptively simple, revealing the dark secrets of elite media power couple Dorothy and Sean Turner (Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell) after they take in the mysterious young Leanne (Nell Tiger Free) as a nanny for their newborn son Jericho. It’s a herculean task of tonal mastery, yet also one fraught with peril one false move could betray hard-earned trust in an instant-moments that, despite their compelling highs, admittedly occur in the lowest nadirs of shows like Twin Peaks or Lost. By simultaneously confirming and denying where a mystery is headed, the audience’s imagination is both subjugated and allowed to run wild. The revelation of what is happening, often by gradually confirming what isn’t happening, subsequently allows insidious new possibilities and directions to take root.Īs a creator, to successfully pull off this trope is to demand of your audience a staggering degree of trust and faith in the world you’ve created. We trust that these opaque tenets are second nature to our characters, and the tension builds as something new is tantalizingly revealed through their reactions to success or failure. Their conjuring relies upon mysterious, unexplained rituals whose “rules” are never fully explained. The film follows a woman grieving the loss of her child and the occultist she’s hired to help contact him in the afterlife. Night Shyamalan’s diabolical TV series Servant, my favorite usage of it was in Liam Gavin’s spectral summoning thriller A Dark Song. It’s a recurring element in everything from It Follows to Twin Peaks to The Leftovers until Tony Basgallop and M. No matter the medium, there’s a particular trope I love most when it comes to mysteries or horror.
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