Previewing Into the Dark: All That We Destroy

After the first couple episodes tied very strongly into their holidays, the last couple Into the Dark episode seemed to tenuously linked to the supposed theme. March’s Ides of March episode only had a vague revenge plot but did not even feature an “Et Tu Brute” moment. Now for May, we are treated to a Mother’s Day episode that does not even mention the holiday once.

All That We Destroy features a geneticist mother who clones someone for his son which makes her a mother on two levels even though neither actually celebrates the holiday at any point during the episode. Samantha Mathis (American Phycho) plays the mother who is working on cloning to help cure people of disease in the near future as organ donors. Except she has diverged from her research to make the perfect clone for her son Israel Broussard (Happy Death Day).

See her son is a psychopath with homicidal tendencies and in her mind killing a clone is more in a moral grey area than having him snap and killing an actual human being. Sure this sucks for Aurora Perrineau (who was in the first Into the Dark episode though this is not a cross-over; although, since she is a clone in the future, I guess it is plausible) who plays the clone as she just repeatedly beaten to death while seventies soft rock song Every Time I Think of You is playing and then dragged naked to be cloned again. But hey, Into the Dark has already killed her off before. Things get even more complicated when another ethnically ambiguous woman (Dora Madison, Dexter) moves in the area and takes a likening to the son.

Setting aside dude killing a woman over and over again trope, All That We Destroy is the creepiest and haunting installment to date. It asks hard questions about technology and just how far should we go for the people we care about. Sure the twist ending can be seen from a mile away, but it still remains a satisfying ending.  It almost makes you forget the whole thing has nothing to do with Mother's Day.

Into the Dark Power Ranking
1. The Body (October)
2. All That We Destroy (May)
3. Down (February)
4. New Year, New You (January)
5. Pooka! (December)
6. I’m Just Forking with You (April)
7. Treehouse (March)
8. Flesh and Bone (November)

Into the Dark: All That We Destroy premiere tomorrow on Hulu.