Castle Rock – Severance

By: Kelly Kearney

Hulu has done it again with its highly anticipated horror series “Castle Rock.” Inspired by the characters and settings from Stephen King’s novels comes a show that reminds us why, as adults, we can never and probably shouldn’t ever, go home. Filled with jump scares and plotlines more twisted than its characters, this show takes what you love about King’s work and modernizes it for today’s binge-watching audience.

The search for Henry Deavers

We open in the winter of 1991 where Officer Pangborn (Jeffrey Pierce) searches through the snowy woods for a missing boy named Henry Deaver. After hours of no luck, Pangborn takes a lunch break on the banks of a local frozen lake and shockingly, Henry (Caleel Harris), appears out of nowhere. As if Deaver was dropped from the sky, the officer starts running across the icy waters yelling the boy’s name and ordering him to stay where he is and wait for a rescue. After eleven days lost in the frozen tundra of Maine, Henry appears to be in good health once Pangborn reaches him.

Cut to 2018 and a man named Dale Lacy (Terry O’Quinn) is preparing for his retirement. He serves his wife, Martha (Frances Conroy), breakfast, kisses her goodbye and heads to his last day on the job. Driving through the town it’s clear Castle Rock is one of those burghs where time seems to stand still. Passing tattered homes and crumbling buildings the air hangs thickly over the gloomy suburb no doubt thanks to the ominous presence of Shawshank Correctional Facility, which looms over the entire town. Passing by the prison Lacy turns down a wooded patch and parks his car on the edge of a cliff overlooking the lake. Tying a rope around a tree and feeding it into his car and around his neck, Lacy pauses before he slams his foot on the gas. The rope tightens and the distraught man is decapitated right before his car sinks below the lake’s crystal-clear waters. As the car’s back end is the last to go under, we see a Shawshank prison sticker proudly displayed on the bumper.

The following morning, Warden Lacy’s replacement enters Shawshank and she is greeted by the prison guards. Taking over for a man who was well liked in the town is hard enough, but with the ever-growing popularity of the private prison industry Warden Porter (Ann Cusack) has to whip Shawshank into shape. Lacy’s death is already a nightmare for the board and Porter wants her transition to go smoothly and successfully. It’s why when she finds out her predecessor left an entire cell block unoccupied, she orders officers Zalewski (Noel Fisher) and Reeves (Josh Cooke) to get the section in working order. The two men inform her that cell block F burnt down resulting in many inmate’s deaths, but she’s not interested in what happened, only in pleasing the prison board that appointed her.

Boy in a Cage

Zalewski and Reeves head down to the abandoned cell block and it’s not long before they realize someone has been down there. Zalewski follows footprints in the dust towards a hatch in the floor that he opens and climbs inside for a better look. The hatch is attached to an old water tank and as Zalewski walks down the ladder, he spots an overflowing makeshift ashtray and a young man (Bill Skarsgard) staring back at him through the bars of a cage. It’s a heart pounding jump scare that sends Zalewski back up through the hatch to alert Reeves of his findings. The two men free him and like some feral child, the young man is mute and confused by his surroundings. If his bizarre reaction to seeing a shower for the first time is any indication, he’s been down in that hole a long time. So long so that Reeves and Zalewski wonder what that kind of isolation can do to a person when they themselves have witnessed inmates lose their minds after only a few days in solitary confinement. With no fingerprints on file and no ability to communicate with him, Warden Porter has no idea who he is or how he came to be locked down in a forgotten cell block. Add to the fact the previous warden committed suicide, leading her to think this mystery man could be linked to Lacy just means the prison has a PR nightmare on their hands. What do you do with a young man who doesn’t seem to exist? Warden Porter pushes the man into a series of tests and when nothing comes back conclusive, she harshly orders him to tell her who he is. Quietly, almost in a whisper, the man utters three words “Henry Matthew Deaver.” Impossible according to Reeves, this can’t be the same boy who went missing and was found in the 90’s because that boy was African American and currently practicing death row law in Texas. This guy is an imposter, and this piques Zalewski’s interest. Why would this practically mute, white, young man claim to be the boy who already has ties to this town? Ties that are bizarre in their own right, considering Henry’s father was found frozen to death with a broken back while his son was missing. The town never got over the loss of Reverend Deaver and blamed Henry for all the misfortune that fell onto Castle Rock after his disappearance.

Texas Death Row

Henry Deaver (Andre Holland) wasn’t in some Shawshank cage but fighting for the life of his death row client. A woman named Leanne (Phyllis Somerville), who was accused of killing her husband, has one last shot for a stay of execution before she’s handed the lethal injection. Deaver pleads her case but in the end the Texas ruling stands. Visiting the elderly woman during her last meal, Henry breaks the bad news that today will be her last. She is calm about her fate and asks Henry if he thinks all the memories that made her who she is will be erased like a videotape after her death. Henry, who has no memory before the time spent lost in the woods, tells her about his very first memory, the moment Officer Pangborn found him. Lawyer and client continue to talk about their lives up until the hour of execution where Henry remains the only witness to her death. The execution is quick but then disaster strikes, the old woman survives her final moments and the prison guards decide to kill her by any means necessary. Henry loses it since torture isn’t legal in any state, but the prison guards continue until the old woman flatlines. As he wanders out of the death house towards his car, Henry gets an unexpected phone call from Shawshank. Zalewski, who overheard Reeves offer to get rid of their mystery man in order to fix the new warden’s PR scandal, anonymously tells Henry to come to Castle Rock and a help a man they found in a cage. The calls end with Deaver boarding a bus back to the hometown that never welcomed him and certainly doesn’t now. The minute he steps off the bus the locals are heard mumbling “killer” and a woman by the name of Molly (Melanie Lynskey) watches on while a myriad of emotions hit her all at once. It’s evident she knows Henry and maybe had a relationship with him because her shock gives way to sadness and she ducks below her steering wheel and quickly drives away. If the saying goes, “You can never truly go home,” then Henry Deaver is proof that theory holds some weight.

As Henry reacquaints himself with Castle Rock, he stops at the church and notices the graveyard where his father was buried is now missing. How does a cemetery go missing?  Deaver continues on to his family home where his mother, Ruth Deaver, appears to be suffering from some kind of dementia. While she recognizes her boy, it’s clear she is unstable and ill equipped to care for herself. Luckily for Ruth, she found companionship with ex-Officer Pangborn (Scott Glenn) and this is not something her son is happy about. The tension between the two men is palpable and Ruth shrugs it off like this is the men’s status quo.

Hiding the truth

The following day Henry meets with Warden Porter about the strange call he received. Porter plays dumb and tries convincing him that the call was a hoax. Henry can tell things are not what they seem at Shawshank and its not at all because he is familiar with the facility and its history. His father often ran Bible study with the prisoners and a young Deaver tagged along for the ride. It’s when Porter slips up that she knows of Henry that makes him wonder what she’s hiding. The lawyer never revealed his personal information, nor has he met Porter prior to this meeting. Her avoidance is enough to keep Henry in town digging up information about who could’ve called him and why.

Back at Ruth’s, Henry goes through his old room while Molly, who lives across the street, does the same.  Opening a box of memorabilia filled with missing fliers and school jackets, the woman’s face says it all. Molly cares for Henry and seeing him at the bus stop has brought back all those childhood memories. Cut to Henry in Ruth’s living room talking to Pangborn about the phone call that brought him home and it quickly segues into Lacy’s suicide. Trying to piece this all together, Deaver goes to the spot where Lacy died and tries to remember anything about his life before those eleven days in the woods.

Meanwhile at the prison, Zalewski gets the scare of his life when he notices the mysterious young man disappear from his cell on the prison’s security camera. Within monuments the electricity goes out and then flips back on, only to find the young man staring back at Zalewski. Behind his dead eyed glare are the bodies of two bloodied men, presumably guards. If chaos is a ladder than the minute Zalewski climbed down the water tank he must’ve unleashed an evil that nobody saw coming…Well, nobody but Dale Lacy that is.  The episode ends in a flashback with Lacy, smoking a cigarette while ordering the boy in the cage to tell whoever finds him that his name is Henry Matthew Deaver.

Who or what is this evil that lurked below the floors of Shawshank prison and what does he have to do with the Henry, the town and why Lacy killed himself? Find out in the next spine chilling installment of “Castle Rock.”