Channel Zero: Welcome to the No-End House

Update: Channel Zero is no longer on Showmax. Find your next binge in the full series catalogue here.

A door creaks open into darkness in the second spooky season of Channel Zero (2016-current, Seasons 1 and 2 are now streaming on Showmax) as best friends Margot (Amy Forsyth), Seth (Jeff Ward), Jules (Aisha Dee) and JT (Seamus Patterson) decide to visit the “fun” haunted house on Nivens Street.

The building is supposedly an artist’s installation called The No-End House (which is also the title of this second season of Channel Zero). But the artwork’s materials are listed as “Wood, nails, copper, caulk, you”.

Wild rumours are flying about the house and a previous visitor is shown staggering out and throwing up. It’s a Spooktober special that promises to make all their nightmares come true. But this is no ordinary house/art project. Giant red spray painted letters warns guests “Beware the cannibals” – which is nice as you don’t have a dog to guard the property, we suppose. We got an especially soulless real estate agent to guide us around six of the house’s rooms.

The head room

Just through the entrance way, this fabulous living area features original period fixtures including a bay window, fireplace, hardwood floors and a moulded, vaulted ceiling that just ooze craftsmanship – along with eight sculpted busts that visitors claim to be eerily, disturbingly lifelike. As with many old houses, there is an intermittent electrical fault that occasionally plunges the room into the dark pits of hell, so don’t forget that that cellphone you were using just moments ago has a flashlight function so you can see the disembodied hands.

The Pool Room

Just off the head room via the right-hand fireplace door, we have what we like to call the Pool Room. It has great potential as an ultra-luxe wet room thanks to the sunken entrance and exit ways and well-spaced, waterproof lighting fixtures. What could be more chic than your own private indoor pool? Again, there is a lighting fault, but nothing that a competent electrician and exorcist couldn’t attend to. The paint needs a touch up, but that will have the added benefit of covering the conspicuous fresh streak of blood on the floor. The revolving door off the pool room – yes, it does stick occasionally – leads to a corridor that would benefit from your special touch updating the wallpaper, lighting sconces and carpeting, as they are currently quite literally maddeningly dreary and tasteless.

The Attic Room

At the end of the passage we have a pretty blue entrance way leading into an attic-styled room with pitched ceiling and a giant video wall. Like the pool-room, this entertainment area is one of the high-end features of the No-End House. The current projection system plays trippy footage of guests’ past traumas, but that’s not to say you couldn’t replace it with rugby or The River. The only limit is your imagination.

The Living-Dead Room

A connecting door leads to a living area or family room that has currently been staged with a bland couch, television and tranquil neutral décor that should shows off the house’s potential to buyers who might have been put off by the more avant-garde aspects of this home. To add to that feeling, the TV and video setup has been loaded with potential buyers’ home video footage, and a dead, bloated relative is pre-installed on the sofa to welcome you home. Charmingly retro.

A door off the Living Dead Room leads outside…ish. A special feature of The No-End house is the neighbourhood, an absolute dream to anyone who has ever managed a Home Owner’s Association. The houses featured are uniformly beige, and all gardens are well maintained. Interiors have all been modelled on guests’ childhood homes.

Other features of the No-End House and neighbourhood include a light-up whisper-egg, masked creeps, wandering lunatics, temporal and spacial anomalies, corpses in the street, neighbours who mind their own business, murderous doppelgangers, orchids galore and that sinking feeling. Also, cannibals. We promised six rooms and you will have noticed we have mentioned only five. This you have to see for yourself. So come, come inside your darkest thoughts…

Plus

If you’re trick or treating this October, Showmax has blood and terror for all your for Halloween needs! Aside from Channel Zero, we also recommend a “screaming” of another newly released series…

Sleep Tight (2018) follows a young Marianne (Jessica Garcia) as she collects people’s stories of true encounters with the supernatural, bizarre and evil. But the more she collects, the more something from the other side will start to pay attention to her.

So far so whatever, but don’t turn the lights off and prepare to spook-grab your cousin’s ankle just yet. Each story has a modern, social media theme that plays with the idea of urban legends, often with a humorous twist. The horror of Friending your parents on Facebook is nothing compared to what Sleep Tight does with Facebook game requests!

Your Halloween “screaming” playlist

Dark Beacon (2018)

Siembamba (2017)

Freakish (2016)

The Frankenstein Chronicles (2015)

Nightrunners (2015)

The Woman In Black” Angel Of Death (2014)

Warm Bodies (2013)

Insidious (2010)

RAQ (2016)

Scream (1996); Scream 2 (1997); Scream 3 (2000)

From Dusk Till Dawn (1995)

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