Terror Tuesday: Extreme – Episode 5 “Spectral Class” Recap & Review

Spectral Class

Terror Tuesday: Extreme episode 5 starts with an old woman beaten to death in front of a shrine by a bloodied kid. He looks her over before beating her to a pulp.

We then cut across to Nong Sam Wang School. A woman called Oil shows up for her first day teaching but one of the kids, Nik, isn’t there. He hasn’t been in school for a while and she’s concerned. As a result, Oil decides to go on over to his house and try to find him. The family claim that he stole stuff from their house and ran off with his junkie friends. The woman happens to be the same one we saw at the start of the episode beaten down in front of the shrine.

They reported this to the police a while back but there hasn’t been much development in the case. Oil complains about her workload to her mother but of course, her mum hits back about how much harder she’s had things compared to Oil.

That night, Nik shows up at the school. He points out that his family want to kill him. He cowers behind Oil, as it seems like he’s telling the truth. The pair show at the school and demand she hand Nik over. With a knife in hand, Oil and Nik manage to escape and rush round the house. However, the front doors are bolted shut.

Unfortunately, the crooked cops in the area don’t believe that she’s really in danger and ignore her pleas for help. As the pair hide together, Nik explains how, that night, he was forced to coerce alongside his grandmother to perform rituals. Despite being given hallucinogens and forced to do her bidding, he eventually snapped and beat her, explaining the opening scenes of the episode.

When Nik hides, his grandmother and brother, Num, head on inside and begin forcing Oil to drink their concoction which appears to be frog toxins, given the sound of frogs we hear as she struggles to walk. Anyway, Oil stumbles on outside and tries to catch up with the family. Unfortunately, she’s too late as she finds Nik in a room with a knife plunged in his back.

Now, the entire scene that follows is pretty off the wall and bonkers. Oil ends up with Num and with a knife in hand, chops off his penis before throwing it at the old woman. Oil chases after the woman at the school and eventually stabs her repeatedly when Oil approaches, claiming to be Lord Buddha himself.

The next day, the kids show up at the school, see the severed member and the see Oil pacing around the room.

The Episode Review

Anyone else seeing a trend here? We’ve had 3 episodes now that have ended in pretty much the same way; a fourth-wall break from our protagonist as they’re in a staged room. It’s not a bad thing if done well but it does feel a bit overkill.

This episode is by far the worst of the season. There’s not much of an arc and aside from the “twist” involving the old woman, there’s very little horror. Instead, it relies on overacting and a lot of contrivances to move the plot forward. And that ending? Yeah, a bit of a disappointment.