The Terror: Infamy (2×01) A Sparrow in a Swallow’s Nest Review

With the success of The Terror’s inaugural season (review here), AMC decided to expand on this idea and create an anthology horror series similar to Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story. While the first story centered around the disappearance of the Franklin Expedition, this season, subtitled Infamy, ventures into the era of World War II and a string of unexplained deaths in a Japanese American community. Can lightning be caught in a bottle twice for this historical horror series? Only time will tell!

To start off a new horror story, the season needs to set its tone and Infamy does just that. It begins with Masayo Furuya (Yuki Morita) dressing in her traditional Japanese Kimono before walking off to her untimely suicide. This event propels a string of supernatural and unexplained moments to occur in the small Japanese-American community on Terminal Island. Here’s what went down in “A Sparrow in a Swallow’s Nest.”

On board the fishing boat the Taro, Chester Nakayama (Derek Mio) listens to old fishing tales from Yamato-san (George Takei). Chester’s father Henry (Shingo Usami) throws fish back into the ocean as good fortune for Mrs. Furuya. Yamato-san overhears this and says that the events surrounding her death and funeral are the result of a Bakemono, an ancient Japanese monster that traveled over the seas to punish them.

Chester and Henry head home as they run into a variety of odd people along the way. First is Stan Grichuk (Teach Grant), a cannery manager who tries to swindle Henry out of his earnings for his catch. Second they run into Marlon (Reilly Dolman), a sailor, who got them tickets to the movies for that evening. Henry later meets up with his girlfriend Luz Ojeda (Cristina Rodlo) with the vials he got at Mrs. Furuya’s funeral. Turns out she gave him a herbal mixture that would cause an abortion to save him and his girlfriend from the ridicule of their families. Henry believes this led to her suicide.

Henry goes to the cannery to meet with Grichuk about their dispute where Stan gets caught in one of the splitters and nearly gets his head sliced open. Thankfully, Henry grabs a knife and cuts him loose. Back at home, the Nakayama’s have dinner with Amy Yoshida (Miki Ishikawa) as their guest. Chester reveals that he is moving to the mainland to become a photographer and leave the family fishing business. After dinner, he takes Amy for a walk where she discusses the Furuyas. Hideo (Eiji Inoue) would get drunk, beat up Masayo, forget and then beat her up for the bruises believing them to be from an affair. Amy asks if Chester had seen her and he lies.

Meanwhile, there is a knock back at the house. Henry answers to find Grichuk there complaining that the company fired him for Henry’s inability to bring him decent size fish. Grichuk demands reparation and threatens Henry with his lack of registering his boat under antispying laws. In order to protect his family, Henry must hand over the key to his Packard to his former boss. Chester returns and is furious that his father rolled over. They argue over what it is to be a man with neither of them truly seeing the other’s side.

Chester’s mother Asako (Naoko Mori) goes to the Furuya home where she offers them food, but as she tries to purify the home of its evil spirits, Hideo demands she leaves. Henry later takes Hideo out to the bar and apologizes for his wife’s actions, but Hideo doesn’t want to hear it. He leaves and notices a woman, Yuko Tanabe (Kiki Sukezane), dressed in a kimono on the pier. Suddenly, she disappears and his movements become unnatural. He turns his head towards the sun and gurgles before shrieking and covering his eyes. A group of people rush to his aid, but find that he has gone blind from the sunlight.

At a brothel, Chester hangs out with Walt Yoshida (Lee Shorten) and Marlon, using their night at the movies as a ruse for a bachelor’s party. Chester questions what happened to Hideo, but everyone else pays no mind to it because it happened to a terrible man. While everyone parties, Chester explores the ground floor of the brothel where he runs into Yuko Tanabe. He takes a photo of her and she turns to talk to him. She was told to offer him tea and to read his tea leaves because something seems to be troubling him.

She takes him to her room, filled with the appropriate number of creepy masks, where she reads his future. Yuko sees a light and darkness within him, life and death and asks what Chester wants. He imagines his perfect life and she says this is obtainable if he can return to his path. Chester decides to take this as a sign and races off. He steals back the Packard from Grichuk and heads to Luz’s house. She tells him that she has not taking the herbs yet and he begs her not to, hoping that they can run away together and be a family. However, she believes that this is a mistake and that Chester will see more clearly in the morning.

Grichuk heads down to the cannery where he boards the Taro and prepares to burn it. He lights a matchbox, but a wind blows it out. Confused, he looks around, but another wind blows him off the ship and causes him to drown. The next morning, Chester, Henry and Yamato-san discover Grichuk’s body in one of their nets. They are brought into the naval base for questioning where the father and son start to bicker once again. They fight over Chester’s shame and his secret baby which he replies with attacking his father’s lack of ambition. This conversation is abruptly ended when air sirens start to sound and Marlon quickly brings them out of the base.

That evening, the news breaks of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Chester goes to the darkroom and develops the photo of Yuko which shows her face to be nothing but a blur. Suddenly more sirens are heard and as Chester rushes upstairs he sees his father being carted off by the FBI under suspicion of being a spy. He calls out to Chester to fight for his country. Back at the brothel, Yuko stares at herself in the mirror when a piece of her skin starts to peel off. She grabs a needle, bends it and uses it to knit her skin back together.

• • • What is haunting the town of Terminal Island?
    • Why didn’t it attack Chester?
    • Will this creature help the Japanese-American community or make their time worse?

What did you think of “A Sparrow in a Swallow’s Nest”? Was it a satisfying premiere? Let me know in the comments below!

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Dylan Phillips