New Scientist - USA (2019-06-22)

32 | New Scientist | 22 June 2019

Views Culture

I AM not the kind of person who

likes to be scared. I wouldn’t

voluntarily go to a haunted house,

and when I watch horror movies,

I tend to scrunch up into a ball and

peer through my fingers like a

child. I have even been known to

scream in cinemas.

But, surprisingly, I haven’t been

able to tear myself away from two

completely terrifying recent TV

shows. The first is the aptly named

The Terror, a dramatisation of a

mysterious 19th-century Arctic

expedition led by naval officer

John Franklin.

On this ill-fated voyage, two

British ships and the 129 men

aboard them vanished while

seeking the fabled North-West

Passage, a stretch of water that

runs through the icy seas off the

northern coast of Canada, linking

the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

It is full of executive producer

Ridley Scott’s signature style:

ominous music leading to jump

scares. These make me shrink

into the cushions on my couch.

It is a show that plays on our fear

of the dark and the unknown

terrors that it holds.

The vastness of the Arctic makes

for stunning aerial shots of the

frigid sea that evoke a feeling of

extreme isolation. Interior and

exterior shots are taken from

above, as if you are looking down

on history, but the show doesn’t

let the viewer off the hook – you

also get up close and personal with

the terror these men felt in the

face of a wilderness they had the

hubris to try to tame.

HBO’s Chernobyl, a docudrama

about the 1986 catastrophe at the

nuclear power plant of that name,

pulses with a different kind of

horror. For the viewer, of course, it

is very much a terror of the known.

The depiction of the head-in-

the-sand approach to the

infamous reactor meltdown in

what was then part of the USSR,

and the effects of vast amounts of

radiation spewing onto a nearby

Eyes wide shut Horror stalks the screen in different forms as the doomed Franklin

expedition to find the North-West Passage and the Chernobyl nuclear reactor

meltdown become terrifying docudramas. Chelsea Whyte feels the fear

“ These are stories that

are driven by stubborn

attitudes, by superiors

who insist on keeping

to a doomed path”

TV

The Terror

Prod. David Kajganich

AMC

Chernobyl

Dir. Johan Renck

HBO/ Sky TV

Chelsea also

recommends...

TV

The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood

Hulu/Channel 4 (UK)

This adaptation of Margaret

Atwood’s dystopian novel

continues, as resistance

builds. At least there is hope.

Good Omens

Terry Pratchett/

Neil Gaiman

Prime Video

An angel and a demon team

up to save the world.

town for days, is so frustrating that

I was screaming at my television

for entirely different reasons.

This time it was the gentle

cinematography and the quiet,

simple moments that horrified,

because I knew what the

characters didn’t.

In one scene, a few hours after

the explosion at the plant, a young

family joins their neighbours

outside to watch the glow of the

fire against the night sky as if

attending a fireworks display.

Flakes of ash begin to fall slowly

around them, touching their

cheeks and clothing and settling

on their baby’s skin. The children

of the neighbourhood look gleeful

to be hopping around on a sand

spit, playing in the falling “snow”.

They couldn’t know that they were

dancing to their doom. But I did,

and was sick with horror.

In both these dramatisations of

real stories, things start badly and

get worse. Both stories are driven

by a stubborn push through

insurmountable trouble – by

superiors who insist on keeping to

a doomed path. And for what? For

the sailors, it is a dream of glory.

For the politicians involved in

Chernobyl, it is blind patriotism.

The scariest part of both tales

is that these actions and motives

aren’t that difficult to empathise

with. I’d like to think that if I found

myself sailing into icy waters or

facing the heat and radiation of a

failed reactor, I would be smarter

than these people were. I hope I

would turn back, or call for help,

or at the very least try to put the

preservation of life before the

tantalising taste of victory.

But in reality, I don’t know if I

would. Maybe that is the scariest

part of all. ❚

AM

C

All crew on the Franklin

expedition died after

getting stuck in Arctic ice

The TV column

Chelsea Whyte is a reporter

for New Scientist, based in

Boston, Massachusetts.

Follow her on Twitter

@ chelswhyte