‘The Terror’ Season 2 Trailer Haunts a Japanese Internment Camp

The Terror is returning with an unsettling and timely tale of terror. Season 2, officially titled The Terror: Infamy, is set in a Japanese internment camp during World War II. And if the existence of the camp itself wasn’t disturbing enough, the show also throws some creepy ghosts into the mix as well. The end result looks markedly different than the first season, but just as dread-inducing. Watch The Terror season 2 trailer below.

The Terror Season 2 Trailer

As I type this, there’s a public argument going on about whether or not it’s “fair” to refer to the current U.S. border detention camps as “concentration camps.” Squabbles about nomenclature aside, the fact that we’ve reached this point, where people are trying to debate what concentration camps even are, is just another disheartening reminder of how far things have sunk. And at the same time, America has been here before, and it seems like we’ve learned nothing. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese-Americans were systematically rounded up and placed in internment camps.

That blight on America’s history serves as the backdrop for The Terror: Infamy, the new season of AMC’s horror anthology series. This season focuses on “an uncanny specter that menaces a Japanese-American community from its home in Southern California to the internment camps to the war in the Pacific.” And as you watch this creepy new trailer, it’s nearly impossible to separate the events unfolding therein from current events.

The people involved with this season aren’t shying away from the subject matter, either. “I’m deeply honored to be telling a story set in this extraordinary period,” said showrunner Alexander Woo. “We hope to convey the abject terror of the historical experience in a way that feels modern and relevant to the present moment. And the prospect of doing so with a majority Asian and Asian-American cast is both thrilling and humbling.”

Executive producer Max Borenstein added: “As a history-buff and genre geek (not to mention a conscious American today), it’s clear that truth is always scarier than fiction…This season of The Terror uses as its setting one of the darkest, most horrific moments in our nation’s history. The Japanese-American internment is a blemish on the nation’s conscience — and one with dire resonance to current events. I’m thrilled that AMC is giving us the chance to use that darkness as the inspiration for what I hope will be a trenchant, terrifying season of TV.”

The season features George Takei, who also serves as a creative consultant – the Star Trek actor was placed in an internment camp when he was a child. “I consider this chapter of American history, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor, to be an important chapter of American history and it is my life mission to raise the awareness,” said Takei.

That’s not to say The Terror: Infamy is going to be nothing more than a political screed. “On the horror side, the strategy of the show has always been to use the genre of Japanese ghost stories…as an analogy for the terror of the historical experience,” said Woo. “Rather then telling the story from a 3,500 foot docu-drama level, I want to tell it from a very personal level, a micro level so that you feel like you’re in the skin of these people and build an empathy for them…the terror you feel watching your favorite horror movie will be analogous to the terror of what these people will went through.”

The Terror: Infamy arrives August 12.

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