Servant‘s Doll Horror Is Both a Hazy Nightmare and a Creepy Good Time
Photo Courtesy of Apple
What if the terrifying denizens of the infant Uncanny Valley were put to good use for once? What if Twilight’s bug-eyed Renesmee and American Sniper’s stiff plastic baby were intentional aesthetic choices meant to inspire anxiety? Servant, the gripping Apple TV+ series from writer/creator Tony Basgallop and pilot/penultimate episode director M. Night Shyamalan, is all about the horror of inviting a new presence into your house, be it Cronenberg baby anxiety or the equally ancient fear of a younger woman from outside the fold.
When Philadelphia parents Sean (Toby Kebbell) and Dorothy Turner (Lauren Ambrose) hire a weird nanny, Leanne (Nell Tiger Free), it never seems fine. Things are never normal. There is a ghost in the house. That’s because Leanne has been hired to take care of a reborn doll. These hyper-realistic dolls, morphed and sculpted uniquely to match a real baby, can serve a variety of purposes. The Turners’ helps them cope with the loss of their child, Jericho, at thirteen weeks. Reality is simulated for therapeutic purposes. Until it’s not. The first episode ends with a very real cry from a very real baby and uh, where did HE come from?
Shyamalan, who also produced the series, gets pushed up front here because while Basgallop’s script is solid and idea is spooky, it’s Shyamalan’s aesthetic, inventiveness, and tempo in the pilot that set the standard while cinematographer Mike Gioulakis (from various Shyamalan films and Us) creates a static, doll house-like artificiality to the house’s insides. They keep the show grooving through its introductory period at an upsetting, anxious pace.
Servant isn’t scary, really, but its mysteries make for an enthralling nightmare. If you were dreaming about it, it’d reflect the opening titles. A long slow walk down a hallway leads to a closed door, which opens just enough to get a glimpse of what might be a baby and then—oops! You woke up. You’re not sure what was wrong with that last look, but you can’t shake it all morning. Servant is like that. Its horror references are child-based, relationship-heavy, and demonic. Sometimes the touchstones lean towards one element (the tactility of mother!); sometimes they go for all three: Rosemary’s Baby fans, this is for you. It’s not like a replay of that same gaslighting, though. The delusion is entrenched already, cemented with trauma, but still treated as vital—as real as Dorothy’s mastitis. When life in the home changes, and the doll might no longer be a doll, well that’s real, too.
But it’s not just the spooky baby stuff. Sean’s a chef, so Shyamalan and company also throw in a hefty amount of food porn for those longing to see haute cuisine for nothing more than fancy animals tearing apart less fancy animals. If Hannibal made horror food the height of bloody elegance, Servant rips it down to its fleshy ferality. The skinning of an eel. The violence of a cork pop. (Still looks tasty, though.)