The Devil’s Hour review – proof that Peter Capaldi is the world’s most terrifying actor



That face! The grief it conveys! The ex-Doctor’s crook successful this caller supernatural transgression play is chilling – and joins a beauteous wide show from Jessica Raine arsenic a harrowed mom

Crime lord? … Peter Capaldi successful The Devil’s Hour. Photograph: Amazon Prime Video / Hartwood Films undefinedCrime lord? … Peter Capaldi successful The Devil’s Hour. Photograph: Amazon Prime Video / Hartwood Films undefinedLucy Mangan@LucyManganFri 28 Oct 2022 10.00 EDTLast modified connected Fri 28 Oct 2022 10.17 EDT

I bash present not damn with faint reward aft I accidental that the little backmost of Peter Capaldi’s caput is the maximum scary constituent wrong the opening occurrence of The Devil’s Hour, Amazon Prime Video’s caller spooky six-component play by means of Tom Moran. I mean simplest to portion connected grounds the underacknowledged information that Capaldi is the maximum scary histrion moving today. The champion motive a epoch of kids had been not wholly traumatised by mode of his years arsenic Doctor Who is due to the fact that they bash nary longer but admit capable of lifestyles. If you do, you spot that each of it lives successful Capaldi’s look and that maximum of it is suffering, grief and pain.

We spot small of that haunted visage successful the beginning, though it's miles wide his idiosyncratic is the pivot astir which the full happening volition swing. Our indispensable concern is with Lucy (Jessica Raine), an overstretched societal idiosyncratic besides dealing with an aged ma who has dementia, the extremity of her matrimony to Mike (Phil Dunster) and an unreachable, heartbreaking puzzle of a child, Isaac (Benjamin Chivers). He is emotionless, suggestible, susceptible and fixed to seeing and proceeding from figures invisible to others. Lucy wakes up each nighttime clip astatine three.33am exactly, wrenched from lousy visions arsenic she sleeps. Are they mean nightmares caused by contiguous time stresses and strains, oregon the results of buried trauma – arsenic different momentary hallucinations and evident flashbacks recommend? Or are they, arsenic Capaldi’s look implies, immoderate happening worse?

Meanwhile, DI Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel) – a clever younger feline too portion helium is vomiting implicit bloody transgression scenes – is investigating a bloody murder. The offender is connected to the disappearance of a young lad years successful the past and, done the extremity of the archetypal episode, to Lucy too.

Just astir each fearfulness trope you could inquire for is here, piling up similar poisoned saccharine successful a baby’s Halloween bucket. There is the Omen-meets-Sixth Sense antheral oregon pistillate of Isaac. There are flickering figures 1/2-glimpsed and gone. Images of bloodstained tender toys and nightgown hems and a shotgun beneath a chin. There are shadows anywhere.

And past there’s Capaldi, handcuffed to a array successful a darkened interrogation room, talking gnomically to Lucy astir the entirety that has dispersed retired for them, to which we aren't yet wholly privy. “What’s the worst constituent you’ve ever skilled?” helium asks her – an unsettling capable question besides, that helium is calling with That Face, which person to intent each of the pores and tegument to alert disconnected her frame. “All of this!” replies Lucy “You!”

Mum connected the brink … Jessica Raine arsenic Lucy. Photograph: Amazon Prime Video / Hartwood Films undefined

“I’m sorry, Lucy,” helium replies sorrowfully. “You’ve suffered a agelong mode worse than me. You simply don’t comprehend it yet.” Dum dum DAAAAAH!

It’s exceptional fun. Its many, galore pieces – which if they gel volition marque it a fantastic amusement successful each sorts of different ways – are presently held collectively via Raine’s intelligibly storming wide performance. She is superb arsenic the ma fed connected by emotion and worry, the brave adept – determination is simply a well-wrought location unit storyline that ratchets up the hostility – and the imaginable unfortunate who is acrophobic she is astir apt dropping her grip connected sanity (even though whether oregon not she’s a unfortunate of a past, contiguous oregon aboriginal evil we cannot marque sure). The supernatural item is overmuch little captious truthful acold than the aggravated intelligence fearfulness her show inspires. It’s brilliantly done. If the relaxation of the postulation matches arsenic overmuch arsenic her, we're successful for a honestly terrifying woody with.