- Network: Peacock
- Series Premiere Date: Oct 10, 2024
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Critic Reviews
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Hey, this thing is creepy. Teacup thrusts us into the everyday life of a family who must navigate their own internal problems as the world around them becomes increasingly unsettling. And weird! And probably morebloody!
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At best, the series is an entertaining horror story that knows how to use tropes in favor of its mystery. At worst, it has shallow characters and uninspired dialogue, both of which could be improved with a little extra runtime.
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“Teacup” would have made a taut, gripping movie. It’s just spread out over too many episodes, its tension watered down by the length. And it’s clearly set up to run more seasons.
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A handful of arresting visuals—a crow pecking at a dead man’s eye socket, an otherworldly tree encased in an undulating, rainbow-colored oil slick—can’t make up for the fact that this show is about as compelling as a sack of horse feed.
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For a binge, “Teacup” will scratch the right itch — in November, after all eight episodes are out. Week to week, the series is as much at war with the foibles of its format as with the mysterious force attacking its characters. If underwritten characters and suspense alone can sustain the series, then more power to it.
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There’s a great show buried in the poor filmmaking decisions that constantly drag Peacock’s “Teacup,” produced by modern horror icon James Wan.
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While the show, executive produced by “Saw” and “The Conjuring” filmmaker James Wan, has a haunting element of terror running through its first half, it becomes muddled by the final episodes as the mystery at the center of the series is revealed.
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An out-there thriller that rehashes and remixes to engaging B-movie effect.
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Teacup's strengths are far more numerous than its flaws. It's beautifully shot, with elegant camera moves and compositions. It maintains a dread-filled atmosphere. It gets better as it goes and sets up a bigger Season 2 in an organic way, but it's gripping from the very beginning.
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A lot could be forgiven or obscured within Teacup if it were just scary. It aggressively is not.
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It's hard to build a sufficiently paranoid series that hearkens back to classics but doesn't feel derivative. It's a balance that Teacup hits, with echoes of Carpenter and related genre classics that nonetheless feel fresh in conception and execution.
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While showrunner Ian McCulloch’s decision to not draw that mystery out too long is refreshing – as refreshing as the number of Teacup episodes that clock in at under 35 minutes – once there’s an explanation, the horrors befalling the Chenoweth family and friends start to feel a little more hidebound.
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The final episode ends with a sudden and surprising set piece that sets up a second season nicely, and even seems to have one eye on something more expansive: a story in the style of The Walking Dead, where we continue to follow our unlikely band as they try to survive in the face of a supernatural threat. Unfortunately, nothing in Teacup’s first season suggests that the series will be around long enough to make good on that promise.