A TV series about 1980s thrash metal and the Satanic-panic insanity it begat should, by definition, be a fast, furious, and funny affair. Yet Hysteria! is so slow and distended that it proves an affront to the musical genre it purports to love.
Set in a small Michigan town that becomes gripped by fervent religious paranoia thanks to a headbanging trio’s efforts to promote their garage band, Matthew Scott Kane’s eight-part show, premiering Oct. 18, plods along while taking itself far too seriously, devoid of the amusingly rip-roaring electricity of Slayer, Iron Maiden, Dio, and the rest of their Beelzebub-fixated ilk. So inaptly straight-faced that it casts Bruce Campbell as the chief of police and then denies him the opportunity to flex his action-comedy muscles, it’s a misguided nostalgia trip that never comes close to earning a devil-horn salute.
More than one of Hysteria!’s dilemmas are caused by characters not being forthright with others—because, it turns out, if they did openly speak with each other, the show would be a 90-minute movie, which ought to have been its destiny in the first place.
Kane’s tale fixates on teenager Dylan (Emjay Anthony) and his best pals Jordy (Chiara Aurelia) and Spud (Kezii Curtis), who together form Dethkrunch, a heavy metal outfit eager to play to more than just an audience of celebrity cardboard cut-outs. Even though he’s a dorky suburban kid, Dylan dreams of fortune and fame as a high priest of the unholy, and he especially wants to be noticed by Judith (Jessica Treska), a blonde beauty who’s ostensibly out of his league. Just the sight of Judith makes Dylan woozy (cue White Lion’s “Wait”), and fortunately for him, developments soon conspire to make her pay attention to him and his Lucifer-loving band.
The catalyst for Hysteria!’s story is the disappearance of high school quarterback Ryan (Brandon Butler), who in the premiere’s prologue is abducted alongside Faith (Nikki Hahn) from her bedroom by two men in black cloaks and bird-like white masks. Responsibility for this kidnapping—and ultimate death, once Ryan’s body is discovered—is pinned by the local media on Satanism.
Chatter about such profane villainy runs rampant throughout the community, be it at the salon where Dylan’s mother Linda (Julie Bowen) works, or at the church where Faith’s mom Tracy (Anna Camp) holds meetings about the insidious threats facing parents today. “We are moms in a Satanic age,” Tracy proclaims to Judith’s bartender mother Cassie (Jessica Luza) and anyone else who’ll listen, and when she sees a flyer for Dethkrunch in the school, it becomes the target of her ire, even as the group’s prominence skyrockets and Judith—desperate to be a bad girl—starts taking an active interest in it and, especially, Dylan.
The Devil and heavy metal are an ideal marriage of the macabre and the menacing, and fans have always known that songs about the Dark Lord aren’t meant to be taken literally; rather, they’re entertainingly over-the-top celebrations of anti-conformity. Thus, the 1980s’ Satanic Panic was chiefly notable for its stupidity, with parents freaking out over blasphemous material they didn’t like or understand.
Hysteria! understands that dynamic as it strives to generate intrigue from Ryan’s murder and other strange goings-on, including an inexplicable earthquake that rattles everyone’s nerves one evening. Unfortunately, though, the series neither hails metal for its extreme majesty nor taps into the ridiculousness of the Tipper Gore-inspired fights against it. On the contrary, it’s just a straightforward mystery about whether demonic forces are at play in this hamlet, which comes across as a fundamentally ill-conceived tack for a saga about the wild era.
Slow and tame when it should be loud and frantic, Hysteria! begins with a bit of verve—most of it courtesy of executive producer and director Jordan Vogt-Roberts (Kong: Skull Island), who helms the opening and closing episodes—and quickly settles into a sluggish groove. Given that Faith reappears after days away to learn that no one knew she was gone (and that her broken bedroom door has been fixed without a word from mom Tracy), it’s not difficult to discern the identity of the proceedings’ real villain. Tracy is cast as an unlikable zealot from the moment go, and revelations about her backstory and relationship with an enigmatic Reverend (Garret Dillahunt) underscore that she’s a wack job with a savior complex. Even before those bombshells, however, it’s painfully easy to guess that the show is interested in flipping things on their head, with Christianity posited as the truly dangerous cult.
This is the dullest idea available to Hysteria!, but the series is nothing if not unimaginative. Determined to lean into Dethkrunch’s notoriety in order to woo Judith, Dylan carves a pentagram into his hand and creates a fake “cult” that includes everyone from outcasts (like Hereditary’s Milly Shapiro as a goat-loving weirdo) to jocks (Elijah Richardson’s football star Cliff). In doing so, he makes himself, Jordy, and Spud town pariahs, as well as prime suspects in Ryan’s killing.
Alas, despite this thorny turn of events, nothing particularly comical or exciting occurs. What does take place is both stretched to unreasonable lengths and often unbelievable; Judith’s whiplash transition from all-American good girl to leather jacket-wearing rebel with a taste for ritualistic bloodshed, for example, makes little sense, especially considering her own explanation for why she’s drawn to the dark side.
Hysteria! randomly drops more than one subplot (perhaps to be addressed in a hoped-for second season?), and it eventually travels into clichéd terrain—some of it modeled after The Exorcist—that defies even the show’s loopy logic. It’s unclear what drew Bowen to her thankless role as a mother gripped by the idea that she’s being haunted by a malevolent spirit, and that goes double for Campbell, whose Chief Dandridge is a blank of a character that affords the Evil Dead actor zero chances to flash the badass wit and charm that’s made him a genre icon.
Its soundtrack short on classic metal cuts (save for a bit of Bon Jovi, Alice Cooper, and Def Leppard), and its narrative heavy on suspense-free shenanigans, it’s a long-winded slog that’s less Metallica than Yes, destined to inspire viewers not to pump their fists but to roll their eyes and nod off.
