How will the latest Stephen King adaptation fare in its sophomore season?
Haven is the not-so-horrific adaptation of the king of horror’s novella, The Colorado Kid. As per the standard Stephen King story, the eponymous village is located in Maine, and the site of a recent slew of supernatural occurrences, which the townsfolk have dubbed “the troubles.” The show focuses on former F.B.I. Agent Audrey Parker (Emily Rose), an apparently young woman with a shadowy past. In Season One, Audrey arrives in Haven to investigate a routine case, but quickly gets sucked in by the strange nature of “the troubles,” eventually prompting her to hand in her badge when the small shore town promises to yield information regarding Audrey’s past.
At the end of last season, Audrey pieces together information from the townsfolk and an old news article about the mysterious death of “The Colorado Kid,” an orphan named Lucy that looks a hell of a lot like Audrey. Audrey concludes that she and Lucy are one and the same, a mysterious secret that she shares with Nathan Wuornos (Lucas Bryant), her partner and the new chief of Haven PD in lieu of his adoptive father’s demise at the end of last season. The pair has little time to discuss the implications of Audrey’s apparent agelessness, however, as a woman claiming to also be Agent Audrey Parker confronts Nathan and Audrey #1 in the Deja-vu-esque replaying of the show’s opening scene.
The new season opens with a smart, toned-down allusion to the opening chapter of Stephen King’s massively popular It, as a young boy in a yellow raincoat chases a paper sailboat down the gutter of a street before slipping away beneath the sewer grate. The boy doesn’t lose his arm and his life to a multi-dimensional demon clown (unfortunately), though he does pull out his arm covered in what appears to be no-to-low budget red paint, (but is confirmed to be blood), which is running from the Green Street Church’s water source. This event leads Duke (Eric Balfour) and the church’s preacher Ed Driscoll (Stephen McHattie) to strike up a conversation regarding the return of the troubles, and the failing efficacy of the police department’s ability to deal with the town’s problems. This is a wonderfully ominous moment of dialogue where it seems as though the man who may be at the heart of the troubles is foreshadowing further death and despair for the townsfolk – a hopeful sign for a show that hasn’t quite reached the plateau that Stephen King adaptations typically live up to.
The water-turned-blood is not the only strange occurrence in Haven today, as we soon find out. We cut back to Nathan and the two Audreys, whose standoff/interrogation is cut short by a freak frog storm, shortly followed by the appearance of a swarm of locusts – it appears as though the biblical plagues are upon the residents of Haven, which makes me want to revise my qualification of these events from “strange” to “contrived.” Luckily, this tremendously overused staple of the horror genre takes a back seat to the appearance of the show’s mysterious stranger, and Audrey’s attempts to try and stump the apparent imposter.
The new Audrey and the original Audrey are both entirely convinced of who they are: as the episode progresses, however, they slowly become convinced that the other is also who they say they are. Before being able to warm up to the familiar stranger, Audrey #1 calls her old boss, who dispatches a team of F.B.I. agents to investigate this purported stolen identity. Audreys 1 and 2, meanwhile, are mapping and responding to the troubling incidents popping up across Haven, demonstrating their identical abilities of deduction, their peculiarly similar attitudes and reactions, and their eerily accurate recollections of their past, finally culminating in an intimate, line-for-line exchange of the Audreys’ best-kept secret, a horrendous story about stabbing a lecherous priest and becoming a cop. What a mindf… paradox.
Nobody important is hurt this episode, despite the looming threat to the town’s first born sons; rather, we are briefly reintroduced to this story’s supporting cast, including Vince and Dave Teagues (Richard Donat and Trailer Park Boys’ John Dunsworth, respectively), the editors of the local newspaper and goody-goofy comrades to Audrey and Nathan. We also discover that the morally-flexible Duke Crocker has a wife, who has returned to Haven for a time as undisclosed as her identity was last season.
It turns out that the “troubled” man causing the plagues is a new father wracked with the torment of guilt and desperation after the death of his wife; after turning to the bible for solace, the man caused the plagues to manifest, which worsens as he flees in fear for his son’s life. Somehow, Audrey #1 is able to deduce that the man creates what he reads – I can’t quite remember what subtle hints gave it away – but she gives him a book about a bunny to make it all better. Crisis averted. The Audreys agree to not treat each other as hostile, and to work together to discover why they share the same childhood memories – this agreement is challenged almost instantly, as Audrey’s cavalry arrives in Haven waiting to take away the imposter. As it turns out, however, the agents in the bar haven’t been summoned by Audrey #1, but by Audrey #2! The man claiming to be Audrey’s prior boss is not the man who was on the phone earlier (though he has the same name) hinting towards a deeper conspiracy surrounding all these duplicated identities arriving in Haven.
Fringe has already tackled the alternate/parallel universe angle with great passion; hopefully Haven has something a little more original in store for us, perhaps with a few more allusions to Stephen King’s terrifying multiverse as we tread our way towards the heart of the troubles. It will be interesting to see if Nathan, who is typically troubled by insensitivity to the sense of touch, can feel the new Audrey just like he can feel the original Audrey. I hope for the sake of the show’s future that they put more effort into the unfolding of the troubles – the plague side-story was horribly cliche; with little plot integrity, though I remain optimistic for this Canadian-filmed thriller and its ability to grow into the terrifying spectacle that all of Stephen King’s works have the potential to become.
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.