NETWORK: NBC
AIR DATE: July 31, 2008
STARRING: Doug Jones, Molly Hagan, Brett Dier, and John Pyper-Ferguson
WRITTEN BY: Drew McWeeny & Scott Swan
DIRECTED BY: Larry Fessenden

Just a week after Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter hit DVD, his installment of the Masters of Horror spin-off Fear Itself airs this Thursday on NBC. Fear Itself may not technically be a spin-off of MOH, but Mick Garris has admitted that it came about after Showtime said no to a third season of that anthology series. Garris took his horror friends like John Landis, Stuart Gordon and Brad Anderson (all of whom had done MOH installments) and headed to the peacock network. The result, kind of like MOH, has been wildly hit and miss, but even more so than the Showtime incarnation because the peaks haven't been quite as high. Come to think of it, Larry Fessenden seems like a perfect fit for Fear Itself. The man, a writer/director who has some undeniable talent, can be wildly hit and miss and sometimes in the same film. (Check out the review of The Last Winter for more on that.) Written by the legendary Drew McWeeny (Moriarty from Aint It Cool News) and his partner Scott Swan, who wrote the two John Carpenter episodes from the first two seasons of Masters of Horror, the newest episode of Fear Itself has its ups and downs, but will probably leave fans as dissatisfied as most of Fear Itself. Even when Fear has worked, it's really only made us hardcore horror fans wonder what could have been in a third season of Masters of Horror. And when it hasn't, it's made us realize where there isn't a third season of Masters of Horror. Despite a great lead performance and a talented director, "Skin and Bones" falls into the latter category.

In "Skin and Bones", a wealthy rancher (the truly awesome Doug Jones) returns from a week lost in the mountains and he's barely alive. Living up to the title, the rancher looks like the walking dead. Even his family is kind of terrified of him and the doctor says his survival, after ten days in the wilderness, is a miracle. Here's some advice - when a man's wife (Molly Hagan) says "It's in his eyes...he looks like somebody else", take her seriously. In a classic horror set-up, Grady never really returned. After eating his traveling mates for survival, Grady was overtaken by a Wendigo, a flesh-hungry, legendary creature. After an animal on his ranch ends up dead, Grady's family, including his brother Rowdy (John Pyper-Ferguson) come to terms with the fact that their loved one may actually try and eat them. A disappointingly traditional plotline with a predictable climax ensues.

There's a reason that the Wendigo legend persists. It's a strong one. And Larry Fessenden clearly loves this legend. He directed a film called Wendigo before The Last Winter. There are moments in "Skin and Bones" where Fessenden's skill shines through. There's a shot with an emaciated Grady at a barn door that I particularly loved. And Doug Jones simply rules. He's become one of the most interesting physical presences in film, stealing scenes as the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth and Abe Sapien in Hellboy. His riveting physicality nearly makes "Skin and Bones" worth watching and anyone who enjoys this hour of horror television is going to do so largely for what Jones brings to the piece. But both Fessenden and Jones are betrayed by McWeeny and Swan's tin ear for dialogue and the derivative nature of the entire piece. "You think that's your father up there? Well, it's not!" That's merely one example of dozens of lines in "Skin and Bones" that horror fans have heard a thousand times before. McSweeny and Swan throw in a slightly interesting (and very disturbing) twist to the final act (every Fear Itself needs a final act twist), but it's too little too late when the entire first half has felt so overly familiar. The best episodes of MOH and Fear Itself, take concepts that we've seen before (because there really are no new ideas in horror) and make them fresh. Jones makes everything he does more interesting, to the point that his involvement almost satisfies that "fresh" threshold, but you can't shake the feeling that you've seen everything around him before. Maybe even on Masters of Horror.