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SYFY’s Channel Zero: The Horror Anthology That Brought Creepypasta to Life
The anthology series featured some of the best horror and thriller storytellers out there today.
When it comes to generational entry points for horror, Gen X kids arguably had it the best with VHS rentals of slasher flicks like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street, along with low-fi chillers like nefarious chain mail threats and sleepover Ouija board sessions.
For Millennials, the scares turned digital with home computers used as the portal to scares, especially those collected on Creepypasta.com. From 2008 on, that website and Reddit subthreads like r/No Sleep became the meeting place for the young and horror curious. A repository for urban legends around the world, you could scroll through endless threads dissecting the truths behind everything from the Slender Man to local ghost stories. Eventually, it even turned into a home for original, short horror fiction to be shared with those who loved the genre too.
Some of it was very good. So good, that these "Creepypasta" stories inspired screenwriter Nick Antosca (Hannibal, Chucky) to collect and adapt several of them into what would become the four-season SYFY original anthology series, Channel Zero. With the Halloween season upon us, it's the perfect time to revisit these incredibly strong, season long stories that feature a slew of top notch writing and acting talent that many may have missed.
Remembering All Four Seasons of SYFY's Channel Zero
Channel Zero Season 1: Candle Cove
The premiere season of Channel Zero was based on web cartoonist Kris Straub's Candle Cove story about a child psychologist who returns to his sleepy Ohio hometown 30 years after the unresolved killing of five local boys. With his family, he brings up a bizarre children's television series involving skeleton pirates they used to watch as kids — Candle Cove — which has started to air again. And new terrible things start to happen again.
Showrun by Antosca with the help of writers Harley Peyton (Reginald the Vampire), Don Mancini (Chucky), and Mallory Westfall (Fear the Walking Dead), Candle Cove stars excellent character actors Paul Schneider (Parks and Recreation) and Fiona Shaw (Harry Potter), who have to unpack a terrifying legacy of loss and grief that manifests in a monster literally made of teeth. It's an affecting season that sets up the anthology's ability to pack a punch with scares and emotional outcomes.
Channel Zero Season 2: No-End House
The second Channel Zero series is based on Brian Russell's The No-End House, which sets up the titular traveling haunted house attraction as the ultimate terror. Four friends — Margot, Jules, Seth, and J.D. — decide to venture through its doors. But when they leave, they bring the ghosts they find inside back home with them.
Arguably the best season of the four, No-End House is anchored by the work of horror veteran and award-winning thespian John Carroll Lynch (American Horror Story), and features an ensemble of up-and-coming young actors like Jeff Ward (Buggy in One Piece) and Jess Salgueiro (The Boys).
Channel Zero Season 3: Butcher's Block
Maybe the most gory and recognizable of the four seasons due to the inclusion of the genuinely frightening Rutger Hauer as Joseph Peach, Butcher's Block is based on Kerry Hammond's story, "Search and Rescue Woods." It finds two sisters (one who is schizophrenic) moving into a town tortured by a series of disappearances. When the town turns against them as the possible cause, they try to figure out if the infamous Peach family (led by Hauer) is to blame.
The writing staff was joined by Angela LaManna (The Haunting of Bly Manor), and featured a who's who of future horror acting names like Holland Roden (Teen Wolf), Olivia Luccardi (It Follows), and Brandon Scott (The Last of Us).
Channel Zero Season 4: The Dream Door
Last but not least, The Dream Door is an adaptation of Charlotte Bywater's "Hidden Door" and is notably directed by horror storyteller E. L. Katz (The Haunting of Bly Manor, Teacup). In this one, the secrets between a husband and wife begin to manifest as something malignant in their new home.
Maybe the most on the nose of the four seasons, it's still a well acted chiller about what dark secrets can do to our souls. Steven Weber (Wings) appears, along with other TV veterans Barbara Crampton and Gregg Henry.
Channel Zero: The Complete Collection is now available from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, or dig into other shows created by Channel Zero writers like Chucky, Teacup, and SYFY's Reginald the Vampire.
