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The Terror Season 2 Review

The second season of The Terror was released in 2019. It’s not as good as the first season, but it’s still stellar genre television.

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“You ever think you’re being watched?“

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The second season takes place on the west coast of the United States during World War II and centers on the Japanese folklore of bakemono, an uncanny specter that menaces a Japanese American community from its home in Southern California to the internment camps to the war in the Pacific. Whereas the first season was set in the Arctic, this one is set in the internment camps and to me that was quite a fresh setting.

We have never seen this event depicted before to such a degree and it’s important to see just how atrociously the Japanese minority was treated by the Americans during WWII. The period detail is still exceptional and quite realistic, leading to the show functioning best as historical fiction, much more so than a horror series.

The horror elements worked to a degree. On the positive side of things, the J-Horror influences were quite interesting and apt while the mythology of the country and the various spiritual beliefs were also very intriguing. The afterlife sequences were particularly imaginative and unique. But on the negative side of things, the final two episodes ended up as disappointments in comparison to the stellar mid section as the spirit drama was overly extended with too many implausible scenarios, leading to the show feeling like a soap opera.

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Chester is a very memorable protagonist. He is an ungrateful brat toward his adoptive parents, but eventually he learns to become a better person. It was interesting following him on his complicated arc where he made so many lapses in judgment. Luz is a solid love interest and the intersection of the Latino and Asian minorities was well explored through their relationship.

The Americans running the camp were obnoxiously villainous, but unfortunately realistic to a degree as this mostly happened back then. The parents were lovely and the best performers of the bunch. Their relationship with Chester is complex and moving. As for the spirit, the twist about her origin was interesting and it worked, but the piling of additional twists and turns toward the end made the story feel too soapy unfortunately.

Some of those horror scenes were deftly handled, but more often than not they felt forgettable and repetitive with the show working best in the historical drama vein. The costumes, score, editing and directing were all terrific while the acting was uneven with the main actor only getting more confident in the second half of the season’s run. The pacing is also all over the place as it starts too slow and the runtime was obviously needlessly protracted to the length of ten episodes. But overall, the series featured solid characterization and enough emotional engagement that I definitely cared to see it to the end.

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