The blood hits the wall in episode eight, as Castle Rock serves up its grisliest fare so far this season (amidst all the carnage, one might almost overlook Odin’s fatal skewering through the eye).
The Castle Rock Historic Bed & Breakfast–a theme destination featuring “actual murders recreated in exquisite detail”–surely earns a five-star rating in the Macabre Republic Travel Guide. To no surprise, the first guests here are checked out early; the subsequent shots of the crime scene are gorgeously gory, with the naked, slashed corpses forming flesh-and-blood counterparts to the establishment’s mannequins.
The reference to Castle Rock as “the murder capital of 1991” arguably represents another subtle Easter egg dropped into the show–a hearkening back to the homicidal mayhem of Needful Things. Viewers needed to be very astute, too, to catch glimpse of the Salem’s Lot sign when Wendell gets off the bus.
Memo to Jackie Torrance: when you find something dripping a suspiciously crimson fluid, you probably shouldn’t dip your finger in the substance and then taste it! That’s crazier than anything your all-work-and-foul-play uncle ever did in the Overlook Hotel (ol’ Halloran-hacking Jack would have been proud, though, of your surprise axing of Gordon).
Most significant dialogue of the episode: the Kid’s admission to Henry that “I waited for 27 years. I rescued you from that basement and I didn’t ask for any of this.” His words are at once revealing and tantalizingly vague (whose basement?). They also offer further proof that the Kid is not the devilish nemesis the town has cast him as.
Still, let’s not make him out to be the second coming of John Coffey; Castle Rock is a long ways away from The Green Mile. That radio report about multiple patients at Juniper Hill lighting their mattresses on fire at the same time furnishes a perfect reminder that crossing paths with the Kid can be an excruciating experience.
Gordon and Lilith’s knife attack on Henry was American Gothic galore, one of the creepiest scenes we’ve seen to date. For a second there, I thought the show was about to go all Psycho and send its main character into early retirement.
The episode’s interiors–the former Lacy home turned murder-capitalzing inn, the Deaver domicile, Molly’s residence with its shadowed staircase–really work to reinforce a theme sounded earlier in the series: the notion that Castle Rock is a town full of haunted houses.
With “Past Perfect,” the narrative pace has definitely picked up; now it’s time for some payoff. Hopefully next week’s penultimate episode will begin to resolve the season’s different mysteries.