Arctic terror: Chilling decay and horrifying whiteness in the Canadian North

Abstract

Loosely based on the events of Sir John Franklin’s fatal 1845 British naval expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, The Terror (2018) is a historical horror series written and produced for the American pay channel, AMC. In light of the lost expedition’s mythic hold on the Canadian imagination of the North, this article examines how this American series repackages and reproduces myths about the Arctic as a destructive, alien icescape for contemporary audiences in two interrelated ways. First, the coldness of the Canadian Arctic becomes a distinct landscape for survival horror, uniquely shaping the emotional register of terror. In contrast to the jump scares and fast pacing of typical Hollywood representations of horror, the action of horror slows to a glacial pace in the vast whiteness of the snowscape, made more chilling by the gradual decay and death of those who came to claim it. Secondly, ‘the white beast’ of The Terror is represented as a cannibalistic Windigo that takes on different forms as perspectives shift between Franklin’s stranded crew members and the Inuit. Through the Inuit perspective, viewers see imperial hubris transform the North into an inescapable haunted house, raising the horrifying spectre of whiteness.