The Twilight Zone Episode That Had a Sequel From Longlegs Director Oz Perkins

Can we trust the arrival of aliens to Earth with apparently altruistic intentions? Or is it a Trojan horse waiting for the right moment to launch an ambush? This is the fundamental question posed by “To Serve Man,” considered one of the most compelling episodes of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone.” By the time this episode aired on CBS in 1962, Serling’s show had already established itself as an anthology series with short, twisty episodes about supernatural or psychological phenomena arising from the titular Twilight Zone. The original “Twilight Zone” television show is infused with rich, compelling storytelling and a deep sense of nostalgia, and this combination is difficult to recapture or replicate today. However, Jordan Peele took the lead in doing so with his 2019 “Twilight Zone” revival, which ran for two seasons and featured some intriguing episodic premises.

Peele’s approach to ownership was measured. Thematically, their version of “The Twilight Zone” was designed as a direct response to the problems we face today, but its best individual episodes still felt current. However, Peele also understood that it was impossible to divorce the revival from the legacy of the original series, which is why he and his fellow creatives actively paid their respects to it. As a result, the revival included many Easter eggs referencing classic episodes of Serling’s “Twilight Zone,” and even went so far as to explicitly remake/pay homage to a particularly famous installment with “A Nightmare at 30,000 Feet.” This proved to be a double-edged sword, as Peele’s “Twilight Zone” revival proved controversial for the way it combined nostalgic appreciation with inspired reinvention.

In addition to reimagining episodes, Peele’s “Twilight Zone” revival also included a sequel to “To Serve Man” directed by none other than writer-director Osgood Perkins (who knows a thing or two about generating and maintaining fear in coded horror stories). ). But to better understand Perkins’ sequel episode, “You May Also Like,” we first need to talk a little more about its predecessor.

Yespolice to be followed by “To Serve Man” and its sequel, “You Might Also Like.”

Serling’s opening narration for “To Serve Man” introduces the Kanamits, an alien race of nine-foot-plus beings of unknown origin, who arrive on Earth during turbulent times. After the United Nations intervenes, the Kanamit declare their benevolent intentions and express their willingness to solve Earth’s food and energy crises by sharing advanced technology developed by their species. Despite their initial caution, the world’s people and governments begin to relax once a book the aliens left behind is deciphered as titled “To Serve Man.” Over time, the kanamits terraform the Earth into vast natural expanses, solve global problems, and help disband all military forces. However, the illusion of this utopia is shattered when the Kanamits’ true intentions become known in one of the best “Twilight Zone” twist endings of all time: “To Serve Man” is no manifesto. altruistic, it’s actually a cookbook.

“To Serve Man” unfolds through the eyes of Michael Chambers (Lloyd Bochner), a cryptographer tasked with deciphering the book left by the Kanamits. Chambers represents a troubling human impulse: laziness, combined with the perennial refusal to think beyond selfish desires. He’s horrible at his job (an expert at doing absolutely nothing while pretending to do a lot) and is more obsessed with earning a ticket to Kanamit’s home planet for recreational purposes. However, by the time someone else does his job for him and translates the book, it is too late. Michael’s carelessness has cost humanity everything; The people of Earth will soon become little delicacies for an alien race that essentially fattened pigs before slaughter.

The episode’s pun-based twist is of the same variety as Hannibal Lecter’s famous line, “I’m having an old friend over for dinner,” though “Twilight Zone” makes it work by contrasting the darkly ironic fate of Michael with the tension that accompanies the imminent turn. So how does Perkins reinterpret Kanamit’s story in a sequel that sees the return of these intriguing creatures?

Perkins, who has directed hits like “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” and “Longlegs,” knows how to make the most of the quiet anxieties that linger at the edges of human consciousness. In “You Might Also Like”, this element is present throughout, where Perkins focuses on the smug apathy that the Kanamites exhibit in the original, reinforced by their (perceived) superiority over humanity. However, the episode leans entirely on the absurdist humor of Serling’s episode, taking things a mile further with ironic product placements that underscore humanity’s obsession with gadgets they don’t need (but think will solve everything). . Here, a wealthy woman named Janet (Gretchen Mol) suspects something is wrong after losing time and having memory lapses, and the arrival of a foretold egg heralds the Kanamits’ return to Earth.

While “To Serve Man” focuses on the human race’s failure to anticipate its downfall, “You Might Also Like” satirizes rampant consumerism and how it prevents the masses from recognizing the most egregious moral pitfalls. The kanamits in the original episode employed cunning to fool the smartest people on Earth and played a long game to lure humanity into a false sense of inaction. In the sequel, such elaborate planning is not necessary, as the kanamits can simply take advantage of late-stage capitalism to further their goals. You simply have to rate queen eggs as the next most coveted product that will drastically improve everyone’s life. The why and how are irrelevant when something “life-changing” is 50 percent off.

Reception to Perkins’ approach was mixed, and it is certainly a rather alienating episode. While it was an objectively better choice not to take a serious approach for a sequel to a classic “Twilight Zone” episode, the tongue-in-cheek nature of the story feels right on the surface. There was an opportunity to delve deeper into the link between thoughtless consumerism and self-esteem, how “being happy” is often an empty performance for the public, and how hobbies are constantly incentivized. Who do we act for? For better or worse, the episode offers no answers. Instead, it simply ridicules our dependence on “The Egg,” which promises to make everything right again. Of course it’s not like that.