So this weekend I saw Blink, an episode from the new Doctor Who series.
And wow, was that the creepiest hour of my life. “Don’t blink. Don’t even blink. Blink and you’re dead.” Now I’m starting to see what the town council had against that living statue in Hot Fuzz, because yes, there’s something fundamentally wrong with creatures that only move when you’re not looking at them. And horribly scary, because your only defense is to keep looking at them. Could you focus on a Weeping Angel continually, not looking away, not even blinking, even if your life depended on it? Because I’m pretty sure I couldn’t. I tried just blinking one eye at a time, but that didn’t work for long.
Add a spookily gorgeous abandoned house to really punch up the horror feel, just a dash of whimsy here and there, an ending montage especially designed to ramp the paranoia up to 11, and you’ve got yourself a show that’ll send delicious chills up your spine again and again.
(Even some of the more lighthearted moments were intensely disturbing, like the Doctor’s “conversation” with Sally through a DVD, reading from a script which hadn’t been written yet from Sally’s point of view. Hah. I guess time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. Although it’s interesting to note there were no actual time paradoxes in this storyline. All the events fit together nicely, if not… linearly. Except I’m not sure how the message under the wallpaper fit in.)