"I love this family! This is not a family of lunatics!" Tessa Ross (Megan Ketch) coaches her husband Brady (Elliot Knight) to say as they drive through an eerie Boston tunnel. If Tessa's family, the Hawthornes, really aren't a family of lunatics, someone should have informed the set designer.
The Hawthorne house immediately looms in the frame. It's a baroque monstrosity that only gets more grand and macabre as the camera moves inside. These are people who have a dollhouse bigger than my apartment!
This HGTV interlude may seem nitpicky, but one of the themes of the literary movement of gothic horror has been the ability of a place to reflect and even warp someone's mind. The title alone isn't the only evidence that the writers are paying homage to the literary genre. The Hawthornes are named after the king of American Gothic, Nathaniel Hawthorne himself.
With that kind of literary pedigree, no wonder the Hawthorne siblings look so jumpy. Tessa, along with her detective husband, seem the most normal ones in the bunch when they arrive at the house. The reason for this family get-together is to focus on Alison Hawthorne's (Juliet Rylance) mayoral campaign. Along for the family meeting is patriarch Mitch (Jamey Sheridan), who made a fortune in the concrete business but is quick to emphasize his humble beginnings, his icy wife Madeline (Virginia Madsen), clearly the woman behind the man, daughters Tessa and Alison, and son Cam (Justin Chatwin). Cam, a recovering addict, is staying with the family along with his young son, Jack (Gabriel Bateman) while his divorce from his wife, Sophie (Stephanie Leonidas) is finalized.
The Hawthornes are initially concerned about coming off as too rich and unapproachable for the campaign, but they have larger problems ahead. When the tunnel Tessa and Brady had been driving through collapses behind them, a man's belt is found in the wreckage. The belt contains the DNA of a victim of the Silver Bells Killer, a serial murderer who terrorized Boston from 1999 to 2002 and left silver bells behind as his calling card.
At first the Hawthornes are simply upset that their concrete company might get blamed for the tunnel collapse, but their troubles turn even more serious when Mitch collapses at Alison's press conference. Later that night, Tessa and Cam find a box of silver bells and newspaper clippings about the murder in the shed behind the house.
The two begin to believe one of their family is the killer, but who:
Mitch is the obvious first suspect, but he's in a coma. That is, until Madeline kills him in the final act of the episode. She clearly didn't want him telling anyone what he knew, but who is she protecting?
There's Garrett (Antony Starr), the black sheep brother who returns just after Mitch's collapse. He left the family right before the murders stopped and has been off the grid ever since. He also spends his mornings sharpening a hunting knife with a rock, as one does.
And then there's Jack. There's no way that I'm saying that Cam's son is the killer, but there's clear indications that something's not right with the kid.
At first, he seems creepy in a funny way. He tells Alison's campaign manager that he wants to be a medical examiner, "because of the autopsies!" He also is the only family member to connect with the socially awkward Garrett, calling him weird, "but I'm weird too." It seems like a cute thing for a kid to do, but the staging makes it ominous. The director uses deep focus to show Jack's face on one side of the screen and a yawning dark abyss on the other.
And then Cam finds him taking apart the neighbor's cat.
Maybe madness runs in the family.
As the hunt for the Silver Bells Killer begins, the gothic won't stop creeping on to the screen. Cam notices that the showerhead is shaped like a bell. The doorbell won't stop ringing. The surroundings are becoming warped. Everyone has a secret to hide, and I can't wait to find them out.
Thanks for reading this. I'm new here, so I just wanted to say hi! I'm excited to have all of you join me this summer for what is sure to be a wild ride. Let me know if there's anything you would like me to do in these reviews and be sure to share your own thoughts on the episode! Who do you think Madeline is covering for? Is Alison's opponent really behind it all? Will Caramel be alright?
