Review: Lovecraft Country Episode 1, “Sundown”

Lovecraft Country comes out eager to make an impression, giving us thrilling horror set pieces, period detail and blood-curdling depictions of racism.

Here’s what Misha Green’s new show Lovecraft Country isn’t: boring. From the start, which throws us right into the thick of a Korean War flashback/dream sequence that also features Jackie Robinson smashes a Cthulhu-ish monster to pieces with his bat, this show is eager to make an impression. It has things to say about race, it has things to say about filmmaking, and it’s just fun to watch.

If anything, the show might overextend itself at times, but it’s so bursting with flavor it’s easy to excuse that. So let’s visit Lovecraft Country and see if it’s somewhere we wanna stay.

The best thing about the first episode of Lovecraft Country is how much it throws at us. (That also might be the worst thing about it.) There’s the dream sequence at the top, which is an impressively bonkers short film all by itself. We pick up with dreamer Atticus “Tic” Freeman (Jonathan Majors), a war vet and sci-fi nerd coming home to Chicago after getting a cryptic message from his father, who’s gone missing.

The show is set in the ’50s and committed to telling its story from the point of view of its black characters, which it does in a very matter-of-fact way. For example, when the bus Tic is riding through Kentucky breaks down, he and another black passenger don’t even bother asking if they can hitch a ride on the truck that comes to ferry the white passengers into town. What would be the point? They just start walking. In the south or the north, there’s no country for Black people.

In Chicago, we meet more characters. There’s Tic’s bookish Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), who runs a Green Book-like guide for Black travelers, as well as his wife Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis) and their daughter Diana (Jada Harris) who loves sci-fi as much as her cousin Tic. Then there’s wild card Letitia “Leti” Lewis (Jurnee Smollett), and her more responsible, no-nonsense sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku).

We don’t spend much time getting to know the characters before Lovecraft Country sends Tic and George out on the road in search of Tic’s father. Leti, rejected by Ruby, comes along so she can get dropped off at her brother’s house on the way, although he’s not thrilled to see her either — she’s clearly the problem child of the family. It’s in these beginning sections that the show’s eagerness to get to the good bits trips it up a little. We race through an expository scene where Tic gets info about his dad from a local bartender, but have all the time in the world for a duet between Leti and Ruby at a block party. The show lingers on what it finds interesting, which is fine, because what it finds interesting is pretty interesting, but I could have stood to spend more time sitting with the characters before they start out on their journey…to Lovecraft Country.

But once they get nearer the mysterious town of Ardham, Massachusetts, things really pick up. First, there’s a thrilling chase scene after the trio stop in at a diner to eat, George hoping to cover it for his guide. They soon realize that this once Black-owned business was burned down and converted into somewhere they are very much not welcome, and they’re chased out of town by a trio of gun-toting racists, only avoiding death with the aid of a strange woman in a very nice car; we’ll surely see more of her later.

Monsters will eventually show up In Lovecraft Country, but the white authority figures are plenty scary on their own. Really, it’s almost a relief when the Shoggoths show up; you can fight a monster, or run from it. You don’t have to live with it.

The most tense scene from the episode is another chase: Tic, George and Ruby must exit Devon Country before the sun sets, with the racist sheriff driving right behind them. The trio know that if they go over the speed limit, the sheriff will pull them over and brutalize them. If they don’t reach the county line before sundown, he’ll pull them over and brutalize them. There’s real tension to this scene; it’s the most exciting low-speed chase I can ever remember watching.

As it happens, the trio do make it over the county line in time, but the sheriff and his officers have decided to run them up on false charges anyway. The episode ends with a special effects-laden delight, as the police are interrupted by the arrival of many-eyed Lovecraftian horrors right out of a pulp novel. There’s some terrific horror imagery. The sheriff, bitten one by one of the creatures, stumbles around in a sweaty daze, his arm in tatters, before he transforms into a Shoggoth himself, his muscles sliding and squishing under his skin. After it’s discovered that light keeps the monsters at bay, Leti makes a mad dash for the car, bloody in the tree-dappled moonlight. And after it’s all over, our trio stumbles into the morning to find a mysterious mansion, where Tic is greeted at the door. “Welcome home.”

Lovecraft Country teaser art – Photo Courtesy of HBO

“Sundown” isn’t a perfect pilot. It jerks us from one plot development to another, but there’s so much passion behind it that it doesn’t really matter.

The performances are really good, which comes as no surprise considering everyone involved. Majors and Vance are solid as the steady-headed Tic and George, but Smollett makes the most of a flashy role as Leti and pretty much steals the show.

Obviously, Lovecraft Country is grappling with America’s history of racism, paralleling the real horrors of anti-Black racism with the imagined horrors of Lovecraftian monsters, H.P. Lovecraft himself being a notorious racist whose work the show is subverting and reframing. But I feel like selling the show like this underplays how fun it is to watch, how much juice and verve there is behind its pulpy, bloody set pieces, and how much weird mystery is at the heart of it.

Episode Grade: B+

Bullet Point Country:

• The dialogue isn’t especially noteworthy so far, but there are some good exchanges. George: “I’m on a deadline.” Leti: “Aren’t you the publisher?” George: “Exactly, so I know how much of a hardass I can be.”
• So lemme get this straight: George invites his wife to go on a guide trip with him hours after he nearly dies after being chased out of a town by gun-toting racists? Seems like he’d want her further away from is work than ever after that.
• And then Uncle George quotes Dracula while being attacked by unholy murder beasts? He just has an odd sense of timing.

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