Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on July 1, 2008, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
With the disappointing downturn in quality of NBC’s Fear Itself after a strong opener, Eater has stood as something of a great white hope—if anyone could give the series a jolt of much-needed adrenaline, it would be this episode’s director, Stuart Gordon. Even bound by the restrictions of network TV, the man who gave us two of the best installments of Fear’s predecessor Masters of Horror (not to mention cinematic winners from Re-Animator to Stuck) promised to push its boundaries and deliver on the show’s title. That promise is maintained through Eater’s pre-title sequence, which generates more atmosphere, tension and intrigue than the last two Fear entries combined.
The setting is a police station in the town of Chesterton on a snowy night, where towering prisoner Duane Mellor (Stephen R. Hart) is brought in to cool his size-15 heels in a holding cell until the FBI can pick him up the next day. Not only is Mellor a serial murderer who has slain 32 people, he’s also an “Eater” who cannibalizes his victims, and a Cajun practitioner of voodoo as well (though what he’s doing in such a wintry locale goes unexplained). His arrival piques the particular interest of “boot”—that’s cop slang for an officer-in-training—Dani Bannerman (Elisabeth Moss), whose uniform literally covers up her past as a tattooed Goth chick and who makes the mistake of bringing the latest issue of Death Dance magazine into the squad room. “There’s nothing worse than a horror geek,” says one of her fellow persons in blue (Gordon regular Stephen Lee), in a rather transparent attempt to un-endear him to the target audience.
There are similar awkward moments scattered throughout Richard Chizmar and Johnathon Schaech’s script, particularly when this same guy regales Dani with the gross details of Mellor’s exploits and succeeds in freaking her out. Considering she’s the horror fan, shouldn’t the roles in this scene be reversed? And shouldn’t she have seen enough fright films to know that entering a cell where a 7-foot killer lies—even though he might be dead, and she’s got a gun on her hip—might be a bad idea? The writers, working from a short story by Peter Crowther, do manage to up the suspenseful ante by establishing that Mellor not only has a taste for human flesh (as seen in a couple of truly cringe-inducing flashbacks), but can shapeshift into the form of anyone whose heart he has consumed.
Eventually, the who’s-really-who? gambit becomes predictable, but what makes Eater watchable at worst and compelling at best is that Gordon has directed the hell out of it. His use of a constantly prowling camera, canted angles and flickering fluorescent lighting gives Eater an edgy charge that you don’t see often on network TV today, and he keeps his visuals on the right side of being showy for their own sake. More than any Fear Itself director so far, Gordon has approached his assignment as if he didn’t know he was working for television, and made Eater into the closest an episode has come to being a minifeature. Needless to say, Standards and Practices concerns have forced the director to tone down his typical grue, but what’s there is choice, with a couple of moments that genuinely hurt to watch. He also gets good work from Moss, who serves as a sympathetic heroine (even if she doesn’t shoot out the glass precinct doors to escape when she has a chance); Hart, making quite an imposing impression; and Russell Hornsby, doing an effective 180 from his amoral turn in Gordon’s Stuck as Dani’s good-hearted sergeant.
Particularly considering the restrictions of broadcast TV and Eater’s lackluster predecessors, credit is due to Gordon for jumping in with both feet and making the most of limited resources and occasionally dubious material. As a pit stop in between the theatrical gigs where he can truly let his freak flag fly, Eater serves just fine.
