Far better then last episode. My only real problem from this show stems from the fact of how disjointed a lot of the scenes feel from one another. I don't know if that's down to the direction, or the writing, but it seemed better this episode. On the right track.
28 Reviews
Better than the second episode
saifeliya31 August 2020
Turning into a series of 1-hour non-connected episodes?
billsoccer31 August 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Wow - the beginning of this episode is NOT what one would expect after the first 2! It turns into a simple ghost story. No explanation as to why the now 3 main characters didn't let anyone else know of what they found. It ends well and has some good special effects.
This episode doesn't seem to advance 'the story', if indeed there is one. I'm hoping this isn't turning into a show where the weekly episode is has nothing to do with the former, and everything gets solved in an hour. I'll keep watching and hoping, but if this was the first episode someone saw, I don't think there's enough to keep interest.
Jurnee Smollett is crushing it!
hnt_dnl31 August 2020
Warning: Spoilers
The second episode had me worried, but this one HOLY GHOST is most definitely a step back in the right direction. Regardless of my thoughts of the show so far, one thing that's been consistent to me is the amazing acting by Jurnee Smollett as Letitia "Leti" Lewis. I like all the other characters, but so far Leti is the one that's really stood out. Not only does Smollett perform amazingly well in the heavy emotional and epic scenes, but also she hits all the right notes in the quieter moments. Even though Atticus is the star, so far Leti is the character that I feel most connected to in this story. In fairness, Jonathan Majors has really slowly reeled me in with his more subtle and nuanced acting as the show has progressed. Also, this episode was basically a showcase for Smollett. But even in the prior episodes her acting his impressed me mightily. In fact, all of the acting is really good on this show and hard to complain about.
This episode of LC is basically the horror episode as the plot involves Leti inheriting a fortune that compels her to buy a house in a white neighborhood on the North side of Chicago. Leti decides to turn the house into a boarding house and her sister Ruby (excellently played by Wunmi Mosaku) is the first tenant. Smollett proves to be a good scream queen in this one as Leti must battle evil spirits to maintain control of her new home. Simultaneously, she has to deal with her white neighbors who terrorize her and her tenants and try to scare them out. This episode has a special appeal to me as horror is my favorite film genre. Plus, much like the Pilot, this episode had a really good story, excellent pacing, great writing and authentic character interactions. More episodes like this one and the Pilot and less like the second one and this show will turn out to be one of the best things to come out in 2020.
This episode of LC is basically the horror episode as the plot involves Leti inheriting a fortune that compels her to buy a house in a white neighborhood on the North side of Chicago. Leti decides to turn the house into a boarding house and her sister Ruby (excellently played by Wunmi Mosaku) is the first tenant. Smollett proves to be a good scream queen in this one as Leti must battle evil spirits to maintain control of her new home. Simultaneously, she has to deal with her white neighbors who terrorize her and her tenants and try to scare them out. This episode has a special appeal to me as horror is my favorite film genre. Plus, much like the Pilot, this episode had a really good story, excellent pacing, great writing and authentic character interactions. More episodes like this one and the Pilot and less like the second one and this show will turn out to be one of the best things to come out in 2020.
Great Watch
adlerjon31 August 2020
The show (ep1-3) is intriguing and suspenseful but too fast paced for character development to be both linear and meaningful. Great, new setting ... it's just too bad everyone has a consistent personality except the main two characters.
RIP EPISODE 2
marcosjordan2 September 2020
a decent episode on its own, but needs more coherence
hankenchant31 August 2020
Took me quite a while to get used to the very different storytelling in this episode compared to the last one. The episode itself is entertaining to watch and logical at the same time: there is clear explanation on why they moved into the haunted house, how they discover the ghost, how they resolve the problem... The tension and drama is there, the horror elements are fine and nothing feels rushed, at least compared to the last episode the development of is smooth enough. The problem is that there are just too many stuffs that need to be explained from the last episode but it seems that this episode is not even trying to achieve that, I mean at least to me there seemed to be quite a lot of twists going on in the last episode that should landed in some significant consequences, which I do not see any here, but I guess this episode is not to blame for that.
Tales from the hood vibes
almisaman31 August 2020
This series just keeps getting better and better
kathi-2223626 November 2020
I went into this show without knowing anything about it beforehand. The first episode was really intriguing, so I've kept watching. Each episode just wows me more and more! The mood, the general tone, the filming, the scripts, the wonderful characters, all just have pulled me in. This is how horror should be done!
Random story telling
MegaMaexn1 September 2020
There is no consistency so far, neither in the story telling nor in the type of horror the show wants to showcase, so far every attempt has been feeble.... This time it's about ghosts, but the disjointed episode is told in a poor, boring and predictable way, it has been done so much better a million times. If the quality of writing doesn't pick up soon I am outta here...
Great Episode
loukasphone9 September 2020
Doubles Down And Picks Things Up From The Disappointing 2nd Episode
ObsessiveCinemaDisorder2 September 2020
Warning: Spoilers
After last week's messy and disjointed episode of Lovecraft Country, I was curious to see how the third episode was going to follow up and pick up some of the scattered pieces. The writers seem to either have the best surprise waiting for us at the season finale or are writing themselves into a black hole at light speed. I'm dying to know which.
Having seen this week's episode, titled Holy Ghost, the show's ever-morphing tone is finally starting to make sense now. I understand now that the show is shooting for the most extremist version of "having your cake and eating it too" with its genre game. Instead of a "Monster of the Week", Lovecraft Country is a spinning wheel of "Genre of the Week".
When the genre changes for that particular episode, so does the style and the tone. Initially, I thought the show's sci-fi elements were imagined in Atticus' head. Then, there were real actual monsters. After that, magic and evil cults appeared. More on this week's episode in a moment...
Now that I understand the show's style, I can firmly say I am enjoying the genre-mutating aspect of the show. It feels like I'm given a puzzle piece every week to put on an ever-expanding canvas. I am also relieved that the story is not taking a meta route. Like I've said in my pilot review, my worst fear is that the characters would meet with H.P. Lovecraft as an actual character who turns out to be a criminal mastermind. That would be awful. Knowing all this now, I had much more fun watching this week's episode. It doesn't exactly pick up the pieces or tries to repair last week's episode at all. In fact, it doubles down.
Holy Ghost is a haunted house story that is a literal metaphor about the ghosts of a racist past stopping social progress. The idea of a racist continually being racist in the afterlife and withholding souls from moving onwards was a powerful metaphor and it fits poetically within the idea of a haunted house. Fitting with the Black Lives Matter movement, the story powerfully reflects that progress lies within the hands of both the perpetrator and the victim, and to let the past go is to let it go together. I loved the imagery of that metaphor realized here and there are some creepy ghost designs that are awesome.
The biggest win about Holy Ghost was that I began to care about Atticus and Letitia, which is something that had been missing for me from the first two episodes. It seemed like they never had a moment to sit down and have a real talk about anything with everything happening. Any scenes with the supporting characters, such as Letitia's older sister or Atticus' mysterious father Montrose Freeman, are always a plus and the additional character-building scenes in this episode definitely made up for some much-needed depth.
At the expense of its genre turns, parts of the main narrative feel clipped and jarring at times. Time moves when the writers need it to. Holy Ghost's use of loud jump-scare calendar title cards (as in...*Boom!* "Day 1"), evoking the ones from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, may as well be randomized. I wish the witch doctor had more screentime. That was an awesome character who is again treated in a throwaway manner.
Also, what happened with Uncle George deserved a lot more discussion amongst the other lead characters. Instead, the story treats it more in a throwaway fashion and is overly excited to tell you what happens next. Like Newton's First Law of Motion, the screenwriters have now set the story in motion and just don't seem to want to slow things down and I am concluding now this is probably just something we all have to get used to.
Who would have guessed? Color me again intrigued.
Having seen this week's episode, titled Holy Ghost, the show's ever-morphing tone is finally starting to make sense now. I understand now that the show is shooting for the most extremist version of "having your cake and eating it too" with its genre game. Instead of a "Monster of the Week", Lovecraft Country is a spinning wheel of "Genre of the Week".
When the genre changes for that particular episode, so does the style and the tone. Initially, I thought the show's sci-fi elements were imagined in Atticus' head. Then, there were real actual monsters. After that, magic and evil cults appeared. More on this week's episode in a moment...
Now that I understand the show's style, I can firmly say I am enjoying the genre-mutating aspect of the show. It feels like I'm given a puzzle piece every week to put on an ever-expanding canvas. I am also relieved that the story is not taking a meta route. Like I've said in my pilot review, my worst fear is that the characters would meet with H.P. Lovecraft as an actual character who turns out to be a criminal mastermind. That would be awful. Knowing all this now, I had much more fun watching this week's episode. It doesn't exactly pick up the pieces or tries to repair last week's episode at all. In fact, it doubles down.
Holy Ghost is a haunted house story that is a literal metaphor about the ghosts of a racist past stopping social progress. The idea of a racist continually being racist in the afterlife and withholding souls from moving onwards was a powerful metaphor and it fits poetically within the idea of a haunted house. Fitting with the Black Lives Matter movement, the story powerfully reflects that progress lies within the hands of both the perpetrator and the victim, and to let the past go is to let it go together. I loved the imagery of that metaphor realized here and there are some creepy ghost designs that are awesome.
The biggest win about Holy Ghost was that I began to care about Atticus and Letitia, which is something that had been missing for me from the first two episodes. It seemed like they never had a moment to sit down and have a real talk about anything with everything happening. Any scenes with the supporting characters, such as Letitia's older sister or Atticus' mysterious father Montrose Freeman, are always a plus and the additional character-building scenes in this episode definitely made up for some much-needed depth.
At the expense of its genre turns, parts of the main narrative feel clipped and jarring at times. Time moves when the writers need it to. Holy Ghost's use of loud jump-scare calendar title cards (as in...*Boom!* "Day 1"), evoking the ones from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, may as well be randomized. I wish the witch doctor had more screentime. That was an awesome character who is again treated in a throwaway manner.
Also, what happened with Uncle George deserved a lot more discussion amongst the other lead characters. Instead, the story treats it more in a throwaway fashion and is overly excited to tell you what happens next. Like Newton's First Law of Motion, the screenwriters have now set the story in motion and just don't seem to want to slow things down and I am concluding now this is probably just something we all have to get used to.
Who would have guessed? Color me again intrigued.
Getting better
timothyalis31 August 2020
I enjoyed the first episode but the second one was all over the place. This episode had a more clear cut story and was far more interesting. The sound direction in this show is terrible, which brings the rating down.
The Haunter of the Dark
southdavid7 September 2020
So after whipping the rug, carpet and several floorboards out from under me with last episode, "Lovecraft Country", I thought, might be settling into a different pattern, of two episodes per substory, if you like - but even that proved not to be the case. However, this was a good episode, so maybe I'll just stop worrying and go with it.
A few weeks after returning to Chicago, Leti (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) buys a rundown house in a white neighbourhood and with the help of her sister, Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), opens a boarding house for African Americans. Tension is immediately high, with the local residents beginning a campaign of intimidation against them. But within the house, mysterious forces start to awaken and a story about the scientist who previously owned it, and several disappearances leads Leti to the basement.
It was, as I said, a good episode. If Jurnee Smollett-Bell had been a bit of a passenger in the first two episodes, this one is hers, and she delivers. Half of it is a pretty straight ghost story, with some creepy moments involving bed sheets and mirrors - Half is rallying against the racists outside her house and when Leti goes outside with a baseball bat, it's easy to understand and feel her rage and the helplessness that immediately comes after it. We do get a tie in at the end though, with what might be a wider story, that suggests that the Braithwhite family are not as done in this as they might have looked.
It's hard not to feel like it's going too fast still though. Like they're burning through seasons of story in episodes. And occasionally that leads to moments of confusion, such as the fact that Aunt Hippolyta becomes transfixed by a model of the universe, only for that scene to end and for her, and it, to never appear again. The visual effects are good though, and again the music choices excellent.
My early thoughts that we might be matching "Watchmen" in terms of quality are, at the moment, looking a little ambitious but what we're getting is still good and intriguing stuff.
A few weeks after returning to Chicago, Leti (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) buys a rundown house in a white neighbourhood and with the help of her sister, Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), opens a boarding house for African Americans. Tension is immediately high, with the local residents beginning a campaign of intimidation against them. But within the house, mysterious forces start to awaken and a story about the scientist who previously owned it, and several disappearances leads Leti to the basement.
It was, as I said, a good episode. If Jurnee Smollett-Bell had been a bit of a passenger in the first two episodes, this one is hers, and she delivers. Half of it is a pretty straight ghost story, with some creepy moments involving bed sheets and mirrors - Half is rallying against the racists outside her house and when Leti goes outside with a baseball bat, it's easy to understand and feel her rage and the helplessness that immediately comes after it. We do get a tie in at the end though, with what might be a wider story, that suggests that the Braithwhite family are not as done in this as they might have looked.
It's hard not to feel like it's going too fast still though. Like they're burning through seasons of story in episodes. And occasionally that leads to moments of confusion, such as the fact that Aunt Hippolyta becomes transfixed by a model of the universe, only for that scene to end and for her, and it, to never appear again. The visual effects are good though, and again the music choices excellent.
My early thoughts that we might be matching "Watchmen" in terms of quality are, at the moment, looking a little ambitious but what we're getting is still good and intriguing stuff.
Seems random but it's very Lovecraft
zencohen10 September 2020
Warning: Spoilers
This was a decent return to form after the very rushed and quite silly second episode. Truth is they are all deeply drawing from not just Lovecraft but from the Cthulhu Mythos wider universe and also the Call of Cthulhu role playing game. But presumably most viewers won't be aware of this. The end result is that the connective tissue between them is very weak. Taken on it's own merits this is actually a good hour of entertainment. There's quite a few ghost stories in Lovecraft, they tend to be his earlier works before the mythos was fully developed (post "Dagon"). And this is also an almost note for note interpretation of the classic Call of Cthulhu scenario, "The Haunting" - with a lot of "The Terrible Old Man" and a bit of "Herbert West - Reanimator" thrown in for good measure. I am definitely going to keep watching. The lodge (Silver Twilight Lodge - clearly) has some interesting potential and it wont be long before we see the Great Old Ones I'm sure, though Cthulhu was way way too small in the dream sequence in episode 1.
Where is this story going??
Eb3ast1 September 2020
First episode was an absolute masterpiece for cosmic horror on screen and made me get my hopes up too high. WTF was episode 3... Ghosts? Maybe most enjoy that but ghosts have become thee most cliche thing in tv and cinema. I just want to see Lovecraft's monsters put onto screen. I havent read the book but is this how it really goes? Seems rushed and focused on highlighting real world problems instead of being the fictional story it is. Maybe I overlooked this episode, but all I can say is I pray that episode 4 switches up that path. The chance for Lovecraftian adaptions are so rare, I hope they dont ruin this opportunity to bring back the true terror which is that of insignificance.
Not The Show I Was Expecting (And Not In A Good Way)
zkonedog15 September 2020
When I first heard about "Lovecraft Country", it seemed like a show I would be intensely interested in. I'm a big fan of Jordan Peele's writing, I like most projects that come out of Bad Robot productions, and the sci-fi angle intrigued me. Unfortunately, at least for me, this ended up being a show I bailed on after just this third episode.
I'd usually try some sort of basic plot overview in this space, but since I'm jumping ship on this one early I'll instead give the two primary reasons why I had no desire to continue watching:
1. Even after just these first three episodes, it has quickly become clear that the show will feature an entirely new scenario each week. It looks as if they will all center around some sort of metaphor about the African-American experience. Timely, material, to be sure, but the scattered plots and lack of anything that reeled me in is concerning.
2. The through-line that the show tries to establish? That, to me, was the worst part of it all. It never made a lick of sense to me what was happening.
Overall, after just three episodes it felt like a chore to continue watching this show. The acting is solid and the general production value (effects, visuals, music, etc.) are great, but plot/character wise there was nothing to appeal to me. Perhaps encasing the material in African-American socio-cultural metaphors will be enough to propel "Lovecraft Country" to success in these turbulent times of social upheaval. But taking a more nuts-and-bolts approach to evaluating it, the lack of coherent plot and trackable characters is readily apparent.
I'd usually try some sort of basic plot overview in this space, but since I'm jumping ship on this one early I'll instead give the two primary reasons why I had no desire to continue watching:
1. Even after just these first three episodes, it has quickly become clear that the show will feature an entirely new scenario each week. It looks as if they will all center around some sort of metaphor about the African-American experience. Timely, material, to be sure, but the scattered plots and lack of anything that reeled me in is concerning.
2. The through-line that the show tries to establish? That, to me, was the worst part of it all. It never made a lick of sense to me what was happening.
Overall, after just three episodes it felt like a chore to continue watching this show. The acting is solid and the general production value (effects, visuals, music, etc.) are great, but plot/character wise there was nothing to appeal to me. Perhaps encasing the material in African-American socio-cultural metaphors will be enough to propel "Lovecraft Country" to success in these turbulent times of social upheaval. But taking a more nuts-and-bolts approach to evaluating it, the lack of coherent plot and trackable characters is readily apparent.
Haunted house concept.
cruise0113 September 2020
Writing, again, sinks the episode
heatsink9831 August 2020
Following a terrifying and incredibly important discovery in the previous episode that magic is quite real, there's a large group of magical crazies loose in the world, and our hero has laid the smack-down upon said crazies, this episode takes the obvious route of exploring the pitfalls of...a Victorian fixer-upper? What? To be fair, it's a haunted fixer-upper, but that has nothing to do with the prior episodes. We also see the neighborhood racists come out to cause trouble while our heroes attempt to banish whatever's haunting their new pad.
In any case, lack of response about dealing with the strange events witnessed in episodes 1/2 creates a disjointed viewing experience. And a deus ex machina wrap-up in this episode doesn't help matters.
In any case, lack of response about dealing with the strange events witnessed in episodes 1/2 creates a disjointed viewing experience. And a deus ex machina wrap-up in this episode doesn't help matters.
The last 20 min blew my mind.
wolf_spirit8621 September 2020
Unbelievably weak
cdmiller35 September 2020
WHERE IS THE RELEVENCE?!
abbasbayern13 September 2020
No longer interested in the series
Delrvich7 September 2020
Seems like it started another story, now more people missing, and continuing the evil White bigots angle. I am no longer interested in watching the entire series especially if I might have to re-watch it a few times for it to make sense.
Holy ghost ... more like
cyroskristi1 September 2020
Holy Ghost
bobcobb3016 December 2020
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