History As Horror Show

The second season of The Terror looks at one of the darkest periods in America’s past.

- Matt Zoller Seitz

AMC’S The Terror: Infamy, a horror fantasy set against the backdrop of Japanese-American internment, is the kind of story in which metaphors turn literal. Among the most unnerving images is that of a Japanese-American man trapped on a frozen lake, the ice cracking all around him. This character is believed to have named fellow Japanese-Americans as spies to the U.S. Department of Justice, knowing they were innocent, for fear that if he’d told his bosses the truth—he didn’t know any spies—he would have lost his job and the trust of the Establishment. His accusers have cracked just enough of the ice to make it impossible for him to move without imperiling himself further. The sight of a man marooned on a sheet of ice, paralyzed by the fear that any move he makes will be the wrong one, sums up the predicament of many of this anthology series’ characters, who remain estranged from the place they’ve adopted as their homeland and can’t seem to win for losing: If they learn English, adopt local customs, and otherwise attempt to assimilate into the white-dominated mainstream, they’re viewed with suspicion, and if they keep to themselves and try to preserve some semblance of their culture, they’re viewed with even more suspicion.