The original "Candle Cove" story by Kris Straub was short, written in the style of a discussion taking place on an online forum, and had a great twist at the end.
What "Channel Zero" has tried to do is take Straub's story and add to it, filling it out to a six episode series. The problem is that in so doing it has lost what make many of the creepy pasta stories so effective.
Although the series is somewhat effective at building a creepy atmosphere, none of the new material which has been added really works. The characters are not very well developed, the narrative is muddled and as a viewer I was more often confused than scared.
It is such a shame. When I first heard about this series I had high expectations, and the trailers for it were great. It would have been far better to make this an anthology, with each episode being based on a single story, that way you may have ended up with something closer to what made the original stories so memorable.
What "Channel Zero" has tried to do is take Straub's story and add to it, filling it out to a six episode series. The problem is that in so doing it has lost what make many of the creepy pasta stories so effective.
Although the series is somewhat effective at building a creepy atmosphere, none of the new material which has been added really works. The characters are not very well developed, the narrative is muddled and as a viewer I was more often confused than scared.
It is such a shame. When I first heard about this series I had high expectations, and the trailers for it were great. It would have been far better to make this an anthology, with each episode being based on a single story, that way you may have ended up with something closer to what made the original stories so memorable.