Evilhad a talent for taking ordinary things like VR headsets,holiday jingles, YouTubers,Animal Crossing, and the “skip intro” button and making them macabre and horrifying. One post-pandemic episode of the Paramount+ series fromRobertandMichelle Kingmight particularly haunt you after watching — not because of something you might find in the Halloween aisle, but because it hits too close to home.Season 4, Episode 4, “How To Build a Coffin,” features a demon that steals your words, andit’s one of the scariest episodes of the entire series.
‘Evil’s Brain Fog Demon Is Subtly Frightening
At the beginning of the episode, the team examines a red-carpet reporter who suddenly has trouble remembering words and communicating properly during an on-air incident. Doctors insist that he didn’t have a stroke or head injury. When the man starts to get aggressive, more medical professionals take him away. But then,one by one, our heroes start to lose their words as well.Turns out: it was a demon all along.
The demon makes recall nearly impossible. The afflicted characters trail off in the middle of their thoughts.They’re completely helpless to fight this thing they can’t even see without the ability to communicate.Within the episode, this phenomenon agitates the audience by slowing things down. The way Kristen (Katja Herbers), David (Mike Colter), and Ben (Aasif Mandvi) struggle to complete sentences disrupts the natural flow of quippy television dialogue.It’s more unsettling than terrifying.When we finally get a look at the demon, thanks to Sister Andrea (Andrea Martin), a nun with the ability to see what others can’t, he is fairly formidable.
But even Sister Andrea is concerned about other things: more importantly,the word-stealing demon’s horned, monstrous form is nothing compared to the pauses between wordswhen our usually whip-smart heroes start to lose their ability to complete thoughts. It hurts to watch in a secondhand anxiety kind of way.The characters are initially frustrated, not scared. This is because they’re trying their best to rationalize this phenomenon. Nobody wants to admit that they’re not smart, so they struggle through those painful pauses to cover up for the fact that they can’t recall simple words. Kristen, ever the skeptic, even takes an online cognitive test in an attempt to figure out what’s going on with her before even considering the possibility of a demon.
You Can Watch ‘Evil’s Best Episode Even if You’ve Never Seen the Show
This ‘Evil’ Episode Makes Something That Was Already Scary Even Worse
This demon does something so mundane and yet, well, evil. Losing your memory is terrifying. Not being able to complete your thoughts, and having your productivity inhibited by something outside your control, is a nightmare in and of itself. Buta gloopy literal demonfeasting on your words, begging you to communicate with others so he can slop it up? No, thank you!
In a world where “brain fog” has become a household term and with a society that seems hell-bent on making us stupid,this is especially scary because it has happened to us.Has mental or physical illness made you feel like you’re not as smart as you used to be in the last five years? Kristen’s therapist even says in the episode outright that since the pandemic, pretty much everyone’s cognitive abilities have declined — if not from disease, then fromincreased screen timeand decreased social interaction.
We’ve all forgotten words before. We’ve all Googled our symptoms and tried to diagnose our problems with online tests. What if you weren’t able to stop? What if the words never came back? It’s terrifying to no longer be able to do something you took for granted. At the end of the episode, a priest exorcises the demon andSister Andrea delivers the final blow.The team moves on to other problems, relieved to have their words back. But for a moment, they were truly ineffective. Things could have gotten bad for the trio and the people they help.If only we all had a Sister Andreato exorcise our problems.
Evilis available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
