Terror Tuesday: Extreme – Episode 7 “Dear Granny” Recap & Review

Dear Granny

Episode 7 of Terror Tuesday: Extreme starts with an exasperated woman, Montha, speaking to her mum about fishing down by the lake. After a big chat about eels, Montha turns her back to take  work call and when she looks back… her mum has disappeared.

Montha heads home and she’s distraught. She blames herself for what’s happened and can’t stop crying. Montha’s daughter, Nulek, blames Montha for their entire family falling apart but alas, this is not the last we’ve seen of dear granny.

As a strange nursery rhyme plays, we get a nice little montage of missing pets. One of them happens to be a pet parrot that looks a bit like Jib-jib, the bird from episode 1. Are there stories all connected I wonder?

Montha loses control and starts throwing plates around and screaming. Her daughter stays upstairs in her room, chatting with her friend online. Montha meanwhile, heads out to the market, carrying her grandmother’s shoes. She ends up sleeping all day, awaiting her turn to speak to the shaman.

When Montha arrives, the shaman explains that granny is still around but there’s a ghost blocking her sight and she can’t find her way home. This goes both ways and the only solution is to perform a ritual. In doing so, she’ll be home in 3 days time but this is not a cheap solution. She’ll need to plead to the Four Heavenly Kings for help. Montha is also told to perform the shoe-tying ritual which (as you may have guessed) involves tying these shoes together. In doing so, Montha is then to concentrate hard and try to guide her mum back home.

In her room, Montha urges her mum to return while Nulek grows more disillusioned by the day. She struggles to converse or really open up about how she’s feeling and as such, they grow further apart. As for Montha, she’s possessed (figuratively, not literally for a change) about this ritual and tries to kill time until her mum returns.

On the third night, Nulek notices strange footprints leading to the house. Yep, it’s her grandmother. Montha is there to sort granny’s dirty feet out and all seems to be well in the household. Well, not really.

In the morning, Nulek finds her mother’s room empty save for a white pot moving back and forth under the bed. Something slimy crawls out and into Nulek’s clothes, causing frightening visions to ensue, eventually culminating in a strange man stalking her outside, and her grandmother singing her a lullaby on the bed.

Montha receives an urgent call and races out of work. Unfortunately, granny’s body is found washed up on the side of the river. So if that’s her mum… then who’s at home?

Unfortunately, it seems like Montha has brought something else back, not her mum. It could well be this ghost that’s been posing as her mother and blocking her from returning. At least, that’s the implication.

Granny drops her façade and dumps eels all over Nulek’s head, deciding afterwards that they should play hide and seek, with the threat of Nulek’s ear cut off for good measure. After getting caught the first time and having her ear sliced, Nulek decides to try and head out the bathroom widow. The music then starts blaring heavy metal, for some reason, while Nulek bolts and runs for it. Eventually though, Nulek is hit by a car in the road.

When Montha returns home, she finds the shoes tied together and out in the middle of the street. Unfortunately, this is actually for her daughter, Nulek. Wait, what? Well the scene rewinds here to show who this strange man is and how he’s tied to the house.

Now, it appears that this guy we’ve been seeing in the window is an influencer and he’s heard stories that Nulek, Montha’s daughter, ran away from home after a fight with her mum. She had an accident not long after running away, eventually culminating in her being hit by a car. This explains why Montha is so distraught after losing her mother, and how Granny and Nulek are tied together.

As the episode closes out, we see that this poor guy is being haunted by both granny and Nulek, who show up in the laptop screen’s reflection, and slit his throat.

The Episode Review

What began as a decent episode and premise, soon devolves into farcical horror as heavy metal plays, we go into slasher territory, and the whole tale feels disjointed and lacking that sting to make the final “twist” that much more satisfying.

Instead, what we get is an episode of ideas stitched together with familiar moments like the shaman spewing exposition and ghostly apparitions but not much to really tie everything together in a compelling manner. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work as effectively as it could and everything falls apart as a result.