Barry Watson and Marvin Jones III
Photo: HuluDo you believe it more likely that the president of the United States would wake up as a patient in a psychiatric hospital, or that a patient in a psychiatric hospital would wake up as the president of the United States?”
Neither outcome, the desperate Henry Cameron (Barry Watson) tells his doctors, is very likely in a rational world. But Henry knows he’s not in a rational world. Where is he? Either in the psychiatric hospital where he belongs, or five floors below the White House, where a usurping vice president is occupying his chair in the Oval Office. Is Henry really the president of the United States? He’s convinced he is. At times, so are we.
Into the Dark: The Current Occupant
Friday, Hulu
“The Current Occupant,” the latest installment in the horror-thriller-suspense series “Into the Dark,” will no doubt have prospective viewers wondering whether the show is intended as a political provocation. And it decidedly is not, unless one wants to impose one’s own agenda on it. The president evoked most emphatically is John F. Kennedy: As the show lurches into its present tense, through a scratchy, static-filled veil of computerized belching and fragments of news footage, what becomes clear is that Henry has been the victim of a shooting. Whether it was an assassination is to be determined, but the pattern of bullets we see, during a fleeting glimpse of Henry’s chart, shows a similarity to JFK’s injuries—except that in Henry’s case the head wound wasn’t fatal, but helped cause what the doctors are calling “retrograde amnesia.” Henry’s dream of his wife (Kate Cobb), standing in a hospital hallway, shows her in Jackie Kennedy Chanel, replete with bloodstains. The hospital’s mysterious visitor (Ezra Buzzington), who’s always staring and glaring at Henry, has ears the size of LBJ’s.
Produced by Hulu in partnership with the independent Blumhouse and its prolific founder Jason Blum (“Paranormal Activity”), the monthly “Into the Dark” is usually pegged to a holiday. “The Current Occupant” is intended as the show’s Fourth of July commemoration, but nothing is on schedule right now. Not even Henry’s recovery: The shooting has led to a lengthy physical rehabilitation in what seems like a normal, if decidedly down-market, hospital, and Henry would like to move things along. Strangely, the supervisor, Dr. Larson (Sonita Henry), won’t even tell Henry who he is, but she does agree that he can be part of a clinical trial of a “very experimental” therapy that might help jog his memory. While it seems calculated to determine just what, if anything, Henry can remember, it pushes him toward a break, as does an encounter in a hallway with a fellow patient named Helen (Lilli Birdsell), who seems to recognizes him.
Sonita Henry and Barry Watson
Photo: Hulu“It’s you! It’s you,” she screams. “Don’t let them take your brain! Don’t let them destroy you!”
Owing more than a little to the old “Twilight Zone” (or even the new “Twilight Zone”), “The Current Occupant” executes a balancing act with considerable aplomb. And it does so for the length of a feature film. We’re never sure what the real truth is; there’s enough evidence in both directions to indicate that Henry both is and isn’t the president. And that Helen is and isn’t the secretary of state. It seems pretty clear that one of their fellow patients (Joshua Burge) is not the Emperor of the Orion Nebulae, though he thinks he did vote for Henry. “Thanks,” Henry says. “I appreciate that.” It’s good to stay in touch with your constituency, no matter how far-flung.
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‘Into the Dark: The Current Occupant’ Review: A Curious Claim to the Oval Office - Wall Street Journal
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