TV – UPROXX – October 1, 2020 at 06:12PM:
Hulu
You’re about to see a mountain of Halloween-related content pouring onto the streaming sites. That’s a great thing, obviously, since staying inside and binging is a lot safer than going to any holiday gatherings, but whittling down all the options isn’t so simple. Fortunately, Hulu’s Monsterland handily earns a place in the spooky-priority queue while diving into an episodic-anthology structure, which is all the rage again with CBS All Access’ Twilight Zone revival and Shudder’s successful Creepshow. That’s more intense than Hulu’s seasonal-anthology horror show, Castle Rock, since each Monsterland episode has a fresh cast and must accelerate tension within a new story, and so on. Well, the show does a fine job of executing scares with at least half of these attempts.
This might not sound like an entirely positive review so far, but I believe that, overall, Monsterland is worth a binge. It’s a hell of a challenge to pull off eight stellar episodes with eight different directing personalities, even if creator Mary Laws also penned several of the screenplays. What I really think is happening is that each of these episodes will appeal to many audience members, but by design, not all of them will appeal to all horror lovers. Those fans can be pretty picky, after all. Some viewers prefer less shock and more suspense, some dig gore, and then there are the fans of a slow burn, which is almost impossible to pull off while packaging a story in an hour-long format. The good news is that the stories are inspired by the best-selling short-story collection, North-American Lake Monsters, which embraced the something-for-everyone approach.
Thirty Mile Zone 