The old lady was creepier to be honest.
Impressions:
The horror and creeping dread is played up quite a bit, and fairly effectively, but I’ve got the protagonist-needs-to-show-some-damn-agency bug in my head at this point, and this one fails hard at that, so how much suspense really is there if you’re not actually going to do anything but lament in your head about what a panic attack you’re having? Especially when late in the episode, things really start to crank up and a frothing mad old lady screams at them in the street, and that’s simply shrugged off. Hell, you got over seeing your friend’s body melt into a mess of tentacles and grab you, and your reaction at the end of that scene was “Eh, it’s not like I can bring him back, so why not be friends with this shambling horror?”
That’s where this fails for me. I’m not going to do anything. I’m not even going to try to do anything. But I’m going to have really intense feelings about it. Nor is anything going to happen to react to or push things forward, but we’re going to be exploring the premise of the episode via conversation for the next twenty minutes. Including the multiple bystanders with spidey sense to gasp in horror as he passes, which makes you wonder how he’s gone unnoticed in general. That’s the difference between this and something like Summer Time Rendering or Higurashi. That and the bad comedy. The forboding atmosphere is done pretty well, but there’s a limit to how much forboding you can string out and involve the characters instead of them just being terrified at general existential dread.
