Constantine Episode 11 Review: Why I’m Now Afraid of Mirrors!
. A WHOLE WORLD OUT THERE . A. <p class=.
The eleventh episode of NBC’s “Constantine” does what the show should have been doing all along: ditch the sidekicks and focus solely on John Constantine himself. The result is an episode that finally shows you how good a horror show this series can be.
Time is running out on “Constantine,” the show based on the DC Comics: character. The more I see and hear, it seems as if NBC already has a pile of dirt to start dumping on top of the show’s coffin, but I’m here to tell you: episode eleven, “A Whole World Out There,” is bloody brilliant, if I may paraphrase John Constantine himself.
Plot Summary
The episode opens with a group of four college students gathering in a cemetery, armed with an ancient spell that can supposedly transport them to another plane of existence. The spell works, and the students find themselves transported into a world in which they are being hunted by a demented killer in a house of his creation. The students escape, only to find themselves being pulled back into that dimension and picked off, one by one.
When John Constantine arrives on the scene, he is reunited with one of the Newcastle crew, Ritchie Simpson (Jeremy Davies, from “Lost”), who helps John piece together what is happening. Apparently, the students have stumbled across the diary of Jacob Shaw (William Mapother – this show is a freaking “Lost” reunion!), a madman who figured out how to travel between planes of existence who has since banished himself to a different plane, waiting to pick off unsuspecting visitors. Together, Constantine and Ritchie must find a way to enter Shaw’s universe and stop him once and for all.
What Worked
Those students you butchered. They didn’t just leap from your imagination. They were flesh and blood.
I’ll make this simple: everything about this episode worked. If you didn’t watch it, you need to. I don’t care if you never watch another episode of “Constantine” – just watch this one. It was fantastic.
First and foremost, this was John Constantine’s episode. No Chas. No Zed (thank God!). Just JC himself. Now, obviously there were supporting characters – Manny made an appearance, which is fine, since the show’s writers seem to know how to use him, and Ritchie is a great addition to the show – but the plot was kept simple this time around. No secondary plots about Zed. No need to continue developing the backstory and character of Chas (although I have no problem with his story arc so far). Just one plot, and one main character to follow.
In all honesty, this is the approach the show should have been taking all along.
And speaking of things “Constantine” should have been doing all along, episode 11 is the first true horror story that the show has told. Having the students being terrorized in a creepy house in a parallel dimension was great, but the show’s writers took that one step further by having Shaw terrorize the students in reality, as well. Just when the students thought they were safe, Shaw was able to appear to them in mirrors, drawing them back into his existence so he should hunt them down before finishing them off. Great concept, executed perfectly.
While episode four, “A Feast of Friends,” may have contained the series’ most emotional climax to date, episode 11 is the tightest, scariest, and overall best story told in season one. It totally works as a standalone episode, so I highly recommend that ANYONE watch it, either on NBC.com, over at Hulu, on iTunes or at Amazon.com.