First look: terror anthology series Them launches on Amazon Prime in April

Fans of Lovecraft Country will love the new terror anthology series, Them, coming to Prime Video next month.

The trailer for Them has just landed and first looks indicate a new binge-worthy series to get stuck into.

From breakout creator Little Marvin and executive producer Lena Waithe, Them is an anthology series that explores terror in America. The 1950s-set first season centres on a Black family who moves from North Carolina to an all-white Los Angeles neighbourhood during the period known as The Great Migration. The family’s idyllic home becomes ground zero where malevolent forces, next-door and otherworldly, threaten to taunt, ravage and destroy them.

Starring British-born but now US-based Deborah Ayorinde and the UK’s Ashley Thomas aka Bashy [that’s right, the musician] as the couple at the centre of the trailer, initially happy and looking gorgeous in their chocolatey dark-skinned love, the tone soon changes, along with the haunting melody appearing to be stuck on a jarring loop as the previously calm scenes switch to terror and fear.

“It got me thinking a lot about my own experiences personally with that gaze, but also a history of that gaze and the terror of navigating this country in Black skin.”

At first glance, the series, created, and executive produced by Little Marvin along with other executive producers including Lena Waithe, evokes tones of Lovecraft Country, another Black-led cast horror production. However, Marvin insists that rather than horror, the series is a terror anthology.

The Root describes his intention: “I started writing the show a few summers back during a time where it felt like every morning I was waking up to the same thing,” Little Marvin said. “I’d go to my phone, I’d look through my social media feeds, my news feeds, and I would see iPhone video after iPhone video of Black folks—women, men, children and families—being terrorized in some way, either by the police or with the threat of the police…watched, harassed, surveilled. It got me thinking a lot about my own experiences personally with that gaze, but also a history of that gaze and the terror of navigating this country in Black skin.”