Them: Covenant: Amazon Prime Video Review

A sustained exercise in unrelenting dread and terror and a confronting watch, Amazon Prime Video's new anthology series Them has an extremely strong start, before final episodes leave you questioning how much is too much.

Set during the Great Migration where hundreds of black families fled from the south of America to avoid the inherent racism that plagued their daily lives, Them: Covenant is the story of the Emory family who move from North Carolina to East Compton.

Following an extremely disturbing opening sequence where matriarch Lucky (Deborah Ayorinde) is threatened by a creepy white woman asking to take her child, Them: Covenant jumps to a family seemingly starting anew in a new home, and a new neighbourhood.

Patriarch and war veteran Henry (Ashley Thomas) is beginning a prestigious engineering job, and everything would, on paper, seem to ripe for a new start.

But as the car drives into their new home's driveway, a meeting committee of all white neighbours is horrified to see a black family moving in to their area - and immediately set out to drive them out in any way possible.

However, the threat to the Emorys is not just outside the walls - inside their home each of them is threatened by a supernatural force that has its own agenda...

Them: Covenant is a chilling and confrontational look at racism in 1950s America.

It's also unflinching and unswerving in its dedication to personifying the horrors of reality and making its protagonists suffer endlessly. There's an atmosphere of dread and unease from the get go - and it culminates in some of the most upsetting TV ever committed to screen in its shortest episode of the first season. Over 35 minutes, a traumatising episode 5 doesn't flinch from showing the horrific nature of racism and the impact on its victims. 

The brutality ramps up in the back half of the series, and in truth, the supernatural elements are sidelined largely for the more human horrors that lurk outside the doors of the Emorys' house. Its commitment to the cause makes the journey a difficult one, and while the supernatural is blamed for the Emorys' descent into hell, their turning into victims throughout gives the series a voyeuristic element that's hard to overcome and even occasionally, forgive.

It's an interesting paradigm that creator Little Marvin has unleashed here - after the high profile Black Lives Matter movement over the past few years, and the shocking death of George Floyd, it's difficult to fully get on board with this mix of Get Out, Lovecraft Country and elements of American Horror Story as the episodes become more gruelling. (A frontier-dedicated black and white episode as a penultimate episode feels a bridge too far).

While the cast are superlative and horrific in equal measures - from Alison Pill's Stepford Wife Betty to Pat Healy's seething indignation of an appalled neighbour, the series belongs to both Thomas and Ayorinde's dignified turns that are both eye-catching and initially sympathetic as the terrors begin to take hold. Though, there's an argument later on that the unrelenting abuse, black trauma and victimisation robs them of any agency in their own story - and their eventual cracking feels like the narrative has robbed them.

Equally, it's fascinating to see that Alison Pill's chief white agitator goes from victimiser to victim thanks to a somewhat odd final narrative furlong - creatively, the series depressingly continues to perpetuate the reality that white people "keep getting away with it" - and it's numbing in parts.

From discrimination at work to an endless campaign from the neighbours, Them: Covenant makes no secret that racism's parallels continue to bubble away below the surface in current day themes. 

Them: Covenant is presented with a superlative sheen and looks stylish as hell - it's a fascinating continuation of the revival that black horror is enjoying. While the early part of the series is riveting, sickening and utterly compelling, latter episodes lapse and lean too much into the more gruelling edges, leaving an audience feeling it's an endurance rather than a thrilling undertaking.

Certainly, there's been no more shocking a TV series made in years, and maybe that's a good thing that horror has pushed the envelope as far as it can - and as far as society went years ago.

That said, it's rare to have a fresh way of pushing boundaries, and Them: Covenant doe it in spades. Whether that's enough to have you along for the ride as the at-times gruesome tale plays out and culminates in its hysteria-filled finale may prove the divisive edge the creators were pushing for.

All 10 episodes of Them: Covenant are streaming now on Amazon Prime Video.