Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Them: The Scare’ On Prime Video, A Second Season Of The Scary Anthology Series

When Them premiered in 2021, it came on the heels of Lovecraft Country and a number of other horror films and series that portrayed institutional racism as the “monster” that frightens and kills as much as the actual otherworldy forces do. The first season took place in the 1950s, during the Great Migration, where the racism was more overt. The second season of the anthology series takes place in 1991, one of the many times when society was reminded that racism is still alive and well in our society.

Opening Shot: A quote from Aristotle: “Fear is the pain arising from the anticipation of evil.” We hear some breathing. Then a man with a pillowcase over his head is sitting amongst servo robots, with a birthday cake in front of him.

The Gist: “LOS ANGELES, 1991.” LAPD detective Dawn Reed (Deborah Ayorinde) wakes up to her alarm; footage of the Rodney King beating is playing on the TV. Her mother Athena (Pam Grier) wishes her a happy birthday; her teenage son Kel (Joshua J. Williams III) is still in bed.

Dawn gets paged to a murder scene, and what she finds is so grisly that even veteran cops are losing their breakfasts. The body of an older woman is crammed in the cabinet under her sink, with her limbs broken in awkward ways. Her head is snapped back, jaw distended, eyes wide in horror. Dawn notes all of this on her mini-cassette recorder as she surveys the crime scene.

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In the meantime, Edmund Gaines (Luke James), who works at a Chuck E. Cheese-like restaurant, auditions for a role as a gang member in a film, and he’s so mild-mannered that he doesn’t even come close. In fact, it’s so bad that the guy manning the camera can’t stifle a laugh. He gets encouragement from Rhonda (Tamika Shannon), the casting agency’s receptionist. They’ve come to know each other a little bit, and Edmund is so taken with Rhonda that he stays in his car all day stalking the office.

Dawn’s boss, Lieutenant Schiff (Wayne Knight), pairs her up with another detective, Ronald McKinney (Jeremy Bobb) on this case, over her objections. But, given her history, Schiff knows she needs the help to keep the investigation on track. The victim was a foster mother named Bernice Mott (Cindi Davis), someone who is familiar to the police due to some domestic violence calls. When they question Malcolm (Deion Smith), one of her older foster kids, Dawn is horrified that McKinney is jumping to the conclusion that Malcolm likely did it; McKinney keeps loudly cracking joints just to get the teen’s attention.

Rhonda takes Edmund up on his invitation to bring her son to his restaurant. His manner switches from menacing to mild almost immediately upon seeing them. He goes and bounces in the bounce house with him, but not before Rhonda promises to flag parts form him in scripts she sees, and they exchange numbers.

Dawn goes to visit Malcom’s little sister Kia (Hattie Hoskins), and while reporting that living with Mrs. Mott was a scary experience, Mrs. Mott herself was scared of “Him,” saying that “she didn’t want to fall asleep. She didn’t want us to fall asleep, either.” We flash to Mrs. Mott screaming “He’s in the house!” while her wall of TV’s — likely there to stave off this scary presence — are blaring. Then a flash to Kia seeing the cleaning products lined up in the hall, and the cracking and screaming of Mrs. Mott being stuffed under the sink.

When Dawn crawls under her own sink, listening to her own description of Mrs. Mott’s body to try to figure out how she got there, things start going scarily awry around her house.

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What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Them: The Scare is the second season of the Them horror anthology created by Little Marvin; the first season, which took place in the 1950s and also starred Ayorinde, came out in 2021.

Our Take: Like the first season of Them , the horror in Them: The Scare is as much about institutional racism than it is about some sort of apparition or monster. Just like at the beginning of the first season, Little Marvin and his writers, along with director Craig William Macneill, are more intent on scaring audiences via a feeling of creepy foreboding than anything else, and they do an effective job of it in the first episode.

There are two sides to this story that are seemingly unrelated, at least on first glance. We see more of Dawn’s investigation into Bernice Mott’s grisly death than we see of Edmund’s inherent weirdness, but we were probably more creeped out by Edmund’s story. That is definitely attributable to Luke James’ ability to go from stone-faced to childlike in the snap of a finger. When we see in in his apartment, looking at a trunk full of children’s toys, a chill definitely went up our spine.

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But Dawn’s side of the story might eventually be the scarier one, due to the fact that she’s working for a department that is in the middle of a scandal that will play out in the national media and lead to the 1992 riots. She’s likely one of the few Black female detectives in the LAPD, and she has to do her job amongst rampant racism and sexism. All of those factors, plus what’s going on at home with her mother Athena, will likely play into how she goes about investigating this murder. As in the show’s first season, Ayorinde is adept at turning her emotions on a dime, and while Dawn is supposed to be an emotional rock in her family, the way she approaches her investigations is unusual and fascinating to watch.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Dawn hears a deep voice going “Are you scared?” which jolts her out from under the sink. She holds her chest while panic breathing.

Sleeper Star: We love the idea of having Pam Grier and Wayne Knight in their supporting roles. Not sure if Knight is going to be anything more than Dawn’s not-racist boss, but we still like seeing him there nevertheless. Grier’s character Athena certainly has more going on than just being Dawn’s mother, and we’re looking forward to seeing what that is.

Most Pilot-y Line: Edmund’s boss did not like the dance he did in costume at the restaurant. “The kids liked it,” Edmund said. “A kid just tried to swallow a Skee-Ball. They’re not Siskel and Ebert,” the boss replies.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The first episode of Them: The Scare does a good job at setting the scene and giving viewers the creeps from the jump.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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