The Fair-Haired Child is the ninth episode of Masters of Horror, written by Matt Greenburg and directed by William Malone, and boy howdy have we already run out of "Masters"? No disrespect intended towards William Malone, but it's hard to follow Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter, Joe Dante, and Dario Argento. I mean, come on: Wes Craven, Sam Raimi, and David Cronenberg said no? They didn't have ten days free to shoot an episode? You know, maybe they were, maybe they just didn't have any interest or time, but it's just such a sad downward spiral of names. They probably should have scattered the bigger names throughout, rather than front loading the whole series with them. Because here's the thing, the main attraction that I felt when I wanted to watch this series was seeing these huge name directors work on a smaller scale with the restrictions of mid 2000s tv. My interest was already waning before because of the similar problems each episode (with the exception of Cigarette Burns) had with their characterization and production, but I don't know how much longer I'll be able to hold on after we are officially out of the legends part of the season.
With that said, (I'm so sorry William Malone), Fair-Haired Child is a pretty good episode! Not great, and coming off of Cigarette Burns it's got a tough act to follow, but a really solid piece of horror fiction that is creepy, and unique from the other episodes. The story follows Tara (Lindsay Pulsipher) who is kidnapped by a couple (Lori Petty and William Samples) and is held captive in their basement alongside a boy named Johnny (Jesse Haddock). The thing about this episode which separates itse.f from the others is that everyone is given very sympathetic reasons for doing what they're doing. The parents have a completely logical (to them at least) reason for what they're doing. Told through these truly haunting black and white sequences, you're given a true look into their tragedy that led them here.
Lindsay Pulsipher as Tara is pretty good, she doesn't have much to do other than play victim, but she does that incredibly well. The real showcase performances though are Lori Petty and William Samples. They both get pretty hammy, but Petty especially plays off the snap in her psyche that happened to put these events in place.
The Fair Haired Child, the monster that eventually appears, is a unique enough design, and moves with this eerie almost stop motion quality that makes it an effective creature.
If I had one main gripe with the film, it's that the emotional resolution at the end feels somewhat hollow. Maybe it's that I just wanted something different, but it does seem to end in a very cheap, everything wraps up neatly, way. Still, I was sort of dreading this episode, since I was so familiar with the filmmaker's work, and was pleasantly surprised.