Devil In Silver is an uneven entry into AMC's The Terror franchise

The horror genre is drawn to eerie-looking hospitals with suspicious employees like a moth to a flame. From Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (which gets a cool shoutout in this show) and Stephen King’s The Institute to American Horror Story: Asylum and Legion (also led by Dan Stevens), strange facilities make for a naturally spooky setting. They evoke claustrophobia and endless paranoia while also exploring primal fears of losing control over the mind and body. Throw in the possibility of a demonic creature preying upon vulnerable patients, along with commentary about the country’s hellish healthcare policies, and you have the promising but ultimately messy Devil In Silver. 

The latest installment in AMC’s The Terror anthology brings the series to a more contemporary period, after season one took place at an Arctic expedition in the 1850s and season two during the Japanese-American internment in WWII. Based on a 2012 book by The Changeling‘s Victor LaValle (who serves as a showrunner alongside Halt And Catch Fire‘s Chris Cantwell), the six-episode Devil In Silver plays around with supernatural elements to mixed, sometimes even straight-up dull, results. The concept of Satan himself lurking in the halls of a psychiatric ward’s behavioral unit often fails to complement the intriguing critiques of profit-oriented corporatization of the U.S. healthcare system, and, specifically, how it negatively affects mental health treatment.  

In this case, New Hyde is an underfunded institution that may or may not be home to pure evil. Do bad things happen in this decrepit Queens hospital due to the devil’s presence, or does a fiendish entity thrive on these grounds because of the tragedies that have occurred over a long period of time? It’s what Pepper (Stevens) has to find out when he’s wrongfully admitted for 72 hours that turn into two weeks. It’s his punishment for raging out and punching a trio of cops, who would rather not waste their time on paperwork if they arrest him. So off he goes to New Hyde instead, welcomed by older patient Dorry (Judith Light), with the words, “You were summoned.” He dismisses her, but Pepper quickly realizes that she may be right because something is off with everyone around him.