Haunt You to the End #2 // Review
Callum Shah might be crazy, but he seems to know what he’s doing. He’s got a team of experts who are diving into the most totally haunted place in the apocalypse. The climate disaster has nothing to do with what they continue to find in Haunt You to the End #2. Writer Ryan Cady and artist Andrea Mutti explore the darkness on a small island in a bit greater detail that manages a pretty even exploration of the haunted site AND the dystopian world in which it exists. The combination of paranormal horror and ecological disaster horror gets more definition in its second outing.
It’s a pretty nice shack, but it’s still a shack. It’s going to be the team’s home for fifty hours. There are enough carcinogens floating around in the air to be deadly. Thankfully, they have an ionizer that keeps the air inside relatively clean. Can’t go outside without a mask on, though. So, it’s going to be a bit of a challenge just living in the area, but the air is the least of their concerns. The team is already in a serious state of fatigue, and they’ve been told to head off into the dark to survey an unstable wreck.
Cady takes his time slowly advancing into the site. The opening dialogue between Shah and several others is one that will be familiar to anyone with a passing familiarity in squad-based suspense fiction. The leader has greater knowledge than everyone else and is just as much of a mystery as the site he’s brought everyone to explore. Things are crazy dangerous, and there’s like...ONE guy who recognizes how insane it all is to better convey that to the reader. Then, Cady pulls the trigger, and the moodiness of the site begins to settle in before the horror really shows up towards the end of the issue.
Mutti is a bit better with the interpersonal horror than she is at establishing the atmosphere of the setting. Establishing shots feel a little cramped. The creepy moodiness of the setting never really has a chance to settle in around the edges of the drama. And while some of the blame for this rests firmly on Cady’s script, Mutti’s rendering of the atmosphere is a bit too heavy to deliver the nuanced beauty of a haunted site that really should have been the central character in the second issue.
The clever mixing of environmental and supernatural horror should be fun to explore in future issues of the series, but it will remain to be seen whether or not the series can get enough distance from the central ensemble to get a good look at the world that they’re exploring. The ensemble of characters IS interesting in places, but it lacks the kind of compelling dynamic that would serve the center of the series alone without something more being added in. As the central conflict begins to set in at the end of the issue, there DOES appear to be a chance that the plot will begin to balance out.
