S01E06 The Killian Curse - Vanity/Doppelganger/Vampire (2006)

Sex :
Violence :

Director Thomas Robins
Writers Thomas Robins, Pip Hall, Jeremy Dillon
Starring Priyanka Xi, Zoe Robins, James Shaw, Andrew Hampton
Genre Demonology
Tagline None Listed
Country

Review

"They may be zombies but at least they could moisturise" - Chelsea

Chelsea is all about looks but finds Killian doesn't rank vanity high on his soul capturing agenda. When she is hit by a deformity that resembles leprosy, Chelsea is left with Haley offering help and not much else; can she overcome her cardinal sin and save her soul?

Meanwhile class bully Keith is extracting money from Will and skipping class, clearly a kid on the way to a rewarding career in petty crime and dole bludging. Killian thinks it would be fun if Keith meet himself in middle age and get a taste of what he has been dishing out to the other kids at school. We built this city on rock and roll, can music tame the savage beast?

And finally Haley, who is one of those caring and sharing types, is trying to raise interest in a blood drive without much success. Just as well for the other kids as the blood drive is being organised by the local vampire nest. Can Haley overcome the undead?

Okay I get the 21 motif and the blue filters to indicate for the intellectual challenged that something supernatural is going down, but by episode six it really is starting to get high on the irritating side of the lens. Filters can work for introducing mood, blue normally used to highlight coldness for example, but come on this is simply overdoing things, even your ginger headed cousin from Tassie has got the concept by now.

Something of a confused offering that highlights some poor writing themes

Episode Six really highlights the fact that the script writers have no idea exactly what tiger they have by the tail, and where they should go with said ferocious feline. The first two stories work almost as morality plays, vanity - beauty being skin deep and friendship, violence to those less able to defend themselves, while the third story misses the boat. Haley's only failing, if you want to call it that, is she cares too much for other people and is perhaps slightly naïve. If you are going to bowl down morality tales then by all means do so, but let's not cut and paste ideas as they come to us, it gives an uneven feeling and sure as hell sends out one confused message. Are the Writers here trying to inform the potential audience that the Catholics are right, as long as you recognise your sin at the end you'll be right, as opposed to the virtuous who are pretty much rooted? I could be reading way more into this than the Writers are capable of delivering, but it spreads the lotion on its skin and a review requires a value judgement.

The actual stories themselves aren't too bad in the great scheme of things. Vanity I guess might have been a frightening enough concept for tween chicks brought up on celeb culture and Twilight, the sort that value physical appearance way beyond any other assets an individual may have. It was certainly gross enough with fingers rotting away and eyeballs popping out, yes Weta Studios were involved in the effects. I'm actually going to give this story a tentative two thumbs up, for once Director Robins got it right. We also have confirmation that the kids without a soul are zombies, which is of course a completely new spin on that old warhorse of a sub-genre.

Keith, who like Chelsea has been popping up in preceding episodes gets to front and center it in Doppelganger. The story is interesting after a fashion but makes one wonder if the Writers completely misunderstood the concept of the "Doppelganger". They clearly have no idea how it works, we each have an exact duplicate somewhere in the world - queue Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I'm not entirely sure if the message this tale sends out is successful, I like a bit of rock and roll myself but Keith really hasn't been called upon to pay his horror dues, something a cope out in my opinion.

Vampire throws on a more traditional horror foe and I have to say that I quite dug this tale and the twist which was pretty much lumbering over the horizon from the first couple of minutes. Excellent use of a way out of date bus, and the blood collecting vessels rocked! The sharp eyed will pick up a couple of things wrong in the yarn but I wasn't too fussed really as I have pretty much consigned Killian to the lite end of the spectrum. They really shouldn't get non-horror folk fronting dark genre outings, it very seldom works in any meaningful fashion.

Another episode that highlights the fact that the Producers are not respecting their target audience, really even tweens are more sophisticated in the modern era than this franchise wants to believe them to be. It held my interest in patches but is definitely not something I would recommend, kids want to be scared, The Killian Curse doesn't cut the horror mustard in this regard.

ScaryMinds Rates this episode as ...

Another episode that adds the wobbles to the out of control franchise we have developing, carwreck predicted in Oz.