We’ve finally made it to the time of year when not only is it totally acceptable to stream all things dark and macabre, but it’s actually the social norm. As soon as the sun sets on summer and the chill of fall creeps in, I’m cueing up anything and everything that sends a little shiver up my spine. And while there are a slew of cozy horror movies and new horror shows to choose from this spooky season, one has already surfaced as a sure favorite: Peacock’s horror-thriller Hysteria, which starts streaming today.
OK, but you’ve got one million things in your queue. Or maybe you’ve got decision paralysis over deciding what to watch next. Well, aside from the fact that this series has the perfect vibes for spooky season, here’s why I’m a fan (and think you will be, too).
The story feels both fresh and weirdly relatable.
Let me set the scene: It’s the late ‘80s, and society is wrapped tightly in the collective clutches of “Satanic Panic.” The only thing higher than people’s paranoia is their hair. And in the sleepy Michigan town of Happy Hollow, that fear seems to be founded when a beloved varsity quarterback disappears amid a series of bizarre circumstances.
But you know what they say: Don’t wait for the right opportunity — create it. That’s exactly what Dylan Campbell (Emjay Anthony), a high school wallflower and veritable social outcast, does when he and his best friends, Jordy (Chiara Aurelia) and Spud (Kezii Curtis), decide to get more attention for their heavy metal band Dethkrunch by capitalizing on everyone’s obsession with the occult.
Spoiler alert: The scheme has… unintended consequences.
But still, like, who doesn’t remember a time in their childhood when it seemed like everyone’s parents were freaking out about something they were convinced would be the downfall of the entire younger generation? (“Just Say No to Drugs” will forever be imprinted on my brain.)
The cast is *chef’s kiss.*
So, you’ve got Anthony, Aurelia, and Curtis leading the charge with the young cast, and that alone is pretty compelling. But the adult cast would ensnare any millennial’s attention: Julie Bowen, Anna Camp, Garret Dillahunt, and horror icon Bruce Campbell, to name a few. Make no mistake here: these are the kind of characters you’ll spend most of the season trying to figure out if you like them or hate them. Some are more complex than others in their motivations, but they all think they’re acting nobly. You know the types. Which brings us to our next point…
The characters are campy, complex, and wildly interesting.
Take, for instance, Bowen’s character Linda Campbell, mom to Dethkrunch leader Dylan. “At first, you think Linda’s just a small-town mom in the ’80s who runs a beauty salon and has one kid who’s in a band,” Bowen tells Scary Mommy over Zoom. “By the end of the episode, you realize she may have fallen prey to either satanic forces or — and I’m leaning heavily into the or — the hysteria of groupthink.”
Even for all of Linda’s flaws, though, Bowen gets where she’s coming from (most moms probably would). “Being a mom of teenage boys, I feel that I’m very protective… and have no idea what they’re up to. In the ‘80s, you really couldn’t spread information as quickly; it had to be word of mouth or maybe the six o’clock news. Now teens are on their phones and sending each other things that you just feel like, ‘What is happening?’ And they speak in an entirely different language, so you can feel very isolated.”
So, it wasn’t hard to build a believable dynamic between Linda and Dylan. “I’d honestly say it was my relationship with my TV kids that made me feel as protective as I did of Emjoy when we were actually shooting,” she says, joking, “It’s very easy to love a kid who goes home to someone else’s house at night (laughs). You want to protect them and love them because you don’t have to discipline them, and you don’t have to tell them to brush their teeth, or set up their doctor’s appointments, or check their homework.”
Like Bowen’s Linda, Campbell’s character, Chief Dandridge, is similarly conflicted. Campbell describes him to us as “a rational man trying to make sense out of stuff that doesn’t make sense.”
Still, it’s a role Campbell is relishing. “It’s fun to play an adult character who’s not either screaming all the time, sweating all the time, throwing himself down on the floor, or running around with axes and chainsaws,” Campbell tells us, nodding to his iconic body of horror work, like Evil Dead. “He’s just a guy. He’s just a cop in a small town. It’s nice to play age-appropriate parts, too. I’m in the crooked politician phase of my career, so chief of police? That’s perfect.”
It’s heavy on ‘80s nostalgia.
Besides, who doesn’t want to revisit the ‘80s? The clothes, the music, the fashion — Hysteria is like a time machine, and Bowen was all too happy to hop aboard. “When I was in the ’80s, I didn’t get to have that fun hair. I don’t know why. We never had those great haircuts in my house and all the hairspray, so this was a real fantasy for me to get to have the big beauty queen hair.”
Campbell appreciates that the series is set in a time that, in many ways, was just much simpler.
“The costumes, the ashtrays on all the tables, the dial phones — it was nice to see stuff that I hadn’t see in a while. Pads of paper with pens on all the desks. Push pins with information and articles from newspapers up on the wall. You know what I mean? It’s a very analog world, which I don’t blame anybody for setting something in that period now,” Campbell tells us. “We’re talking the ‘80s — we’re getting into Internet-y early stuff but still primitive communications. If somebody’s not home, they’re not home. If they’re on the phone, you get a busy signal. If you don’t have a quarter, you’re not making a call on that payphone. I love that stuff.”
TL;DR: Make this one your weekend binge-watch. It’s the perfect pre-Halloween stream.
