For horror die-hards, no movie or TV show can be too scary. But for you, the wrong can leave you miserable. Maybe you even lost all nights of sleep in a struggle to get certain images or ideas out of your head.
Never fear, because Slate’s Scaredy Scale is here to help. We have compiled a patent, spoiler-free, very scientific system for judging new horror movies and TV series, and comparing them to classics on a scale of 10 points, so you can determine which ones are too scary for you. And because not everyone is afraid of the same things – some viewers may not be afraid of jumping, while others are haunted by more psychological scares or simply may not feel arterial spores – it breaks fears about three criteria: tension, spookiness, and gore. This time: HBOs Lovecraft Country, the serial adaptation of the novel of the same name by Matt Ruff, in which Jim Crow racism takes supernatural forms and gentlemen black residents of Chicago in the 1950s.
Tension is, as Alfred Hitchcock once explained, a matter of knowing what will happen next, but not knowing when, and Lovecraft CountryLoose plotting and genre-hopping can make the former terribly difficult. But if the villains are white racists and not thousand-eyed blobs or evil ghosts, you know exactly what they’re wearing, and waiting for that can be really scary.
![[ALT TEXT: A chart titled “Spookiness: How much will it haunt you after the movie is over?” shows that Lovecraft Country ranks a 7 in spookiness, roughly the same as Psycho. The scale ranges from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (0) to The Exorcist (10). ]](https://i0.wp.com/compote.slate.com/images/30d82d12-925d-460e-8bb6-ba1c6d07ec4e.jpeg?w=618&ssl=1)
Lovecraft Country works best when his literal and metaphorical demons reinforce each other. The monsters who attack a “sundown town” after dark feel more like escaping from a low-budget function than performances of institutional racism, but when Leti (Jurnee Smollett) moves into a house haunted by the ghosts of Black former residents plagued by a sadistic white doctor, her restless minds literally depict the injustices of the past, in a way that is as unsettling as the truth. Whether you’re more afraid of cross-burning neighbors than angry ectoplasms, the show has treated you.
The concept behind Lovecraft Country seems a bit cerebral, but its execution is literally visceral. Arms are bitten, heads are smeared, and a woman sloughs off her own skin, bit by grisly bit. The history of the race in America is bloody, and that’s exactly how the show renders it.
The first half of Lovecraft CountryThe first season (all that was available in advance) is wildly odd, but the best episodes go deep into the heart of Jim Crow time-crunching, with deliberate nods to its current manifestations (a “rough ride” in the back of a police car feels like a direct nod to the death of Freddie Gray). Like the films of executive producer Jordan Peele, the show uses genre tropes to explore horror in real life, and the reality of some of those horrors will hit some viewers harder than others. Lovecraft Country is almost as suspenseful and as spooky as Get out, and almost as scary overall, but it has much less sly satire and a whole lot more blood. As Get outThe involuntary brain transplant has tired you out, Lovecraft Country will make you lose your lunch.
