A new show has come to rescue the fans of western animation. After the end of Amphibia and with The Owl House in hiatus, Dead End: Paranormal Park arrives to the silver-screen to take away our hearts, maybe literally. Created by Hamish Steele. It is an adaptation from a graphic novel that was an adaptation from a Tapas comic which was an adaptation from a YouTube short that he had worked on. After pitching it to several networks, Netflix accepted the idea to then leave Hamish and his team at Blink Industries (a development and production studio based in London) all on their own. With a writers room of all walks of life and experience they created a story about teenagers working at a haunted Disney Land. “Meet Barney, his dog Pugsley (who can now walk and talk after an exorcism gone wrong-- it’s a long story!) Norma and a thousand-year-old sardonic demon named Courtney who must work together to battle paranormal scares and maybe...just maybe, save the world!” (https://hamishsteele.co.uk/NetflixDeadEnd) Made by true fans of horror, each episode’s name references a popular horror movie with other easter-eggs sprinkle through the background. They are not afraid to change the animation style when necessary -they even have a whole episode in which it changes at least 6 times which is totally justified by the story- and they got away with a good, probably even great, musical episode. It is a masterclass on foreshadowing with each element introduced in the pilot coming back to bite you, all the characters in the four-core are incredibly well flesh out, with the secondary characters varying in depth but no one feels one-dimensional. Like The Owl House or Amphibia despite being marketed towards children they aren’t afraid of having terrifying visuals and sequences. The first scene on the show is literally the abduction of a character, which might not be terrifying for avid fans of horror, but for a casual viewer like me was chilling. However the horror element comes second to what is really the heart of the story: a tale about the weirdness and horror of human, dog and demon relationships. Dead End: Paranormal Park forms part of what I have come to understand as the “Comfort Horror” genre, in which though the narrative may have horror elements it is not the purpose of the story to scare the reader but rather comfort them through this imagery. The first time I heard of “Comfort Horror” was in the description of the Hello From The Hallowoods, a podcast about people surviving in a post-climate crisis world with monsters. For me there is no better description of this type of media that in the about section of said podcast: “How scary is it? A Frankenstein's Monster exploring what it means to be nonbinary and an invisible man finding love at first sight are par for the course in the Hallowoods. In its darker moments, the show can explore themes like religious trauma, isolation and grief, but never lingers there for long. It's been described as a show that helps you sleep easier, rather than one that keeps you up at night.” (hellofromthehallowoods.com) In the same way Dead End: Paranormal Park may touch on subjects like running away from home, transphobia, sensory overloads or social anxiety but it never lingers there for too much. Through the season we also see the character’s embrace the supernatural in their workplace, The Nightmare Before Christmas in July being one of the best examples. It also shines in Norma Khan’s character who’s safe place is the cinematic universe of Pauline Phoenix, a horror star in the show’s world. Comfort Horror doesn’t shy away from the terrors of the world (or the imagined paranormal ones) because it challenges the reader to look for the beauty in the grotesque, and its characters to discover that thing that makes you fight in a frantic realm (spoilers: is mainly found family). Furthermore it is important to note the resonance the genre has with members of marginalized groups. Dead End: Paranormal Park’s lead Barney Guttman is a chubby gay Jewish trans guy with his co-lead Norma Khan being a Pakistani-American autistic teenage girl. In terms of secondary characters we have Bartney’s romantic interest Logan Nguyen (who’s gay and Vietnamese-American) and Badyah Hassan the manager of the Paranormal Park (who’s a hijabi Muslim Iranian-American girl) . (If you’re asking why it is that an English studio with an English creator developed a show with American characters I have no answer for you.) The creator of the show is also a trans man himself, and the creator of Hello From The Hallowoods is queer too. The paranormal has always attracted those othered by society and now storytellers have taken those aspects of the horror genre that made them find solace on a storm and utilized them to create tales that not only make readers invite demons to their homes but also root for them. Dead End: Paranormal Park is streaming on netflix (and other pirate websites). Ari Ochoa Petzois a Mexican-Venezuelan bi genderfluid writer. They like dancing to old music and history. In their free time you can find xem trying to coerce their friends to participate in another of their crazy projects.
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