REVIEW: ‘Two Sentence Horror Stories,’ Episode 8 – Little Monsters

The CW brought tremendous storytelling power in its first season of Two Sentence Horror Stories, the new horror anthology series based on the viral horror genre of the same name. Over eight episodes, Two Sentence Horror Stories has brought diverse stories that utilize various subgenres of horror to create impactful and relevant narratives. As a horror fan who found a gateway to the genre in Are You Afraid of the Dark’s Midnight Society, this series has been everything that I needed and more.

In episode eight, “Little Monsters,” the season comes to an end with a story of vulnerable children and the demon who eats them. When May (Melinda Mo) comes to the housing project after her mother’s death, she meets Khalil (Mikelle Wright-Matos) and Marcus, two friends who are set on training to defeat the demon they know is taking children. The missing children of the housing project aren’t a priority for anyone, which is how the demon continues to have a large supply of food, leaving Marcus and Khalil to make their own demon hunting club. When May comes she’s added to the group and we get a small intro to how these kids are training to take their safety into their own hands. When Marcus is taken, May and Khalil set out to rescue him.

“Little Monsters” utilizes adventure tropes in horror to build out a story that isn’t exactly terrifying as much as it is fantastical, bringing the traditional fairytale of the child-stealing witch to our generation. This episode, “Little Monsters”, is a dark fantasy and like other episodes of Two Sentence Horror Stories, it aims to explore some larger messages. However, they’re rather heavy-handed. When Khalil and May show up at the Demon’s house to save Marcus, a woman is shown in the background, crouching by a hedge on her phone.

Overall, “Little Monsters” marks a great end to the first season of short tales that chill and offer up horror stories that navigate the multitude of subgenres while also showcasing diverse actors and cultural backgrounds that tie into the stories. Through eight episodes, we’ve dealt with issues of trauma, abuse, deportation, and generational gaps that add a lot to the current landscape of horror.

That said, “Little Monsters” seems a little out of place and more fit for a younger anthology series like CBC’s Creeped Out when examining it against the rest of the season. This episode is entirely digestible for children as a dark fairytale where I don’t believe much of the other seven episodes are, making it feel detached from the whole. This isn’t to say that “Little Monsters” doesn’t deal with large themes, but tonally, it’s not as adult as the other seven episodes.

While a second season isn’t confirmed, Two Sentence Horror Stories more than deserves it. As an anthology, it excels in both the varying stories that it puts forth and the quality of them as it uses horror’s subgenres in the way it was intended: presenting us with social and cultural fears.