An episode of The Twilight Zone sequel from Longlegs director Oz Perkins

Can aliens come to Earth with seemingly altruistic intentions be trusted? Or is it a Trojan waiting for the right moment to spring a trap? This is the basic question posed by “Serving Man” under consideration one of the hardest episodes of Rod Serling's “Twilight Zone”. By the time this episode aired on CBS in 1962, Serling's show had already established itself as an anthology series with short, meandering episodes about the supernatural or psychological phenomena emanating from the titular Twilight Zone. The original “Twilight Zone” TV show. is infused with a rich, compelling story and a deep sense of nostalgia, a blend that's hard to recapture or replicate today. However, Jordan Peele took the initiative to do so with his 2019 revival of The Twilight Zone, which ran for two seasons and offered some intriguing episodic premises.

Peel's approach to property was moderate. Thematically, his version of The Twilight Zone was created as a direct response to the problems we face today, yet its best individual episodes still had a sense of timeliness. However, Peele also understood that it was impossible to separate the revival from the legacy of the original series, so he and his creative colleagues actively paid homage. As a result, the revival included a lot of Easter eggs referencing classic sequences from Serling's “Twilight Zone” and even went so far as to blatantly remake/pay homage to one particularly famous part with “A Nightmare at 30,000 Feet.” It turned out to be a double-edged sword, how Peele's “Twilight Zone” revival proved controversial for how it mixed nostalgic appreciation with inspired invention.

In addition to remaking the episodes, Peele's “Twilight Zone” also featured a sequel, “To Serve Man,” helmed by none other than writer-director Osgood Perkins (who knows a thing or two about creating and sustaining fear in coded horror stories). ). But to better understand Perkins' follow-up episode, “You Might Also Like,” we first need to talk a little more about its predecessor.

Sspoilers will follow “To Serve Man” and its sequel “You Might Also Like”.

Serling's opening story for “To Serve Man” introduces the Kanamites, an alien race of beings over nine feet tall and of unknown origin who arrive on Earth during troubled times. Following the intervention of the United Nations, the Kanamites declare their intentions to be benevolent and express their willingness to solve Earth's food and energy crisis by sharing advanced technology developed by their species. Despite initial caution, the world's population and governments begin to relax once the book left behind by the aliens is deciphered as titled “Serve Man”. Over time, Kanamit transforms the Earth into vast, natural stretches, solves global problems, and helps disperse all military forces. However, the illusion of this utopia is shattered when the Kanamites' true intentions are revealed one of the best “Twilight Zone” twists ever: To Serve Man isn't some altruistic manifesto, it's actually a cookbook.

“To Serve Man” unfolds through the eyes of Michael Chambers (Lloyd Bochner), a cryptographer tasked with deciphering a book left behind by Kanamita. Chambers is a troubling human impulse: laziness combined with a perpetual refusal to think beyond self-serving desires. He's terrible at his job (an expert doing absolutely nothing while pretending to do a lot) and is more obsessed with earning a ticket to Kanamita's home planet for recreational purposes. Although someone else will do the work for him and translate the book, it is too late. Michael's carelessness has cost humanity everything; Earthlings are about to become tasty little treats for an alien race that basically fattened up the pigs before they were slaughtered.

The episode's played-out twist has the same variety as Hannibal Lecter's famous “I'm having an old friend for dinner” line, though The Twilight Zone makes it work by contrasting Michael's darkly ironic fate with the suspense of what's to come. twisting So how does Perkins reinterpret Kanamita's story in a sequel that sees the return of these wily creatures?

Perkins, who has directed such blockbusters as “The Blackcoat's Daughter” and “Longlegs,” knows how to make the most of the understated anxieties that dwell on the fringes of human consciousness. In You Might Also Like , this element is present throughout, where Perkins focuses on the apathy of the Kanamites, which in the original is expressed in complacency, reinforced by their (perceived) superiority over humanity. However, the episode leans fully into the absurdist humor of a Serling episode, taking things a mile further with ironic product placement that highlights humanity's obsession with those unnecessary gadgets (but I guess that'll fix everything). Here, a wealthy woman named Janet (Gretchen Mol) suspects something is wrong after she loses time and her memory goes blank, and the arrival of the advertised Egg heralds the return of the Kanamites to Earth.

While “To Serve Man” focuses on humanity's inability to foresee its own destruction, “You Might Like It” satirizes rampant consumerism and how it prevents the masses from recognizing the most glaring moral pitfalls. In the original series, Kanamith used deception to fool the smartest people on Earth and played the long game to lull humanity into a false sense of inaction. In the sequel, such elaborate planning is unnecessary, as the Kanamites can simply use late-stage capitalism to achieve their goals. Queen's eggs simply have to be labeled as the next most desirable product that will drastically improve everyone's life. Why or how doesn't matter when something so “life-changing” is 50% off.

Perkins' approach was controversial, and it's admittedly a rather alienating episode. While it was objectively a better choice not to take a self-serious follow-up to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode, the tongue-in-cheek tone of the story is palpable. There was an opportunity to dive deeper into the connection between reckless consumerism and self-worth, how “being happy” is often an empty show for viewers, and how hobbies are constantly stimulated. Who are we performing for anyway? For better or worse, the episode doesn't provide answers. Instead, it just mocks our addiction to “The Egg” that promises to make everything right again. Of course it isn't.