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In the 5th chapter of NBC series Fear Itself, horror majordomo Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond) follows the worst episode thus far (John Landis) by offering us 'Eater'- perhaps the most succinct, enthralling, overall entertaining entry out of the bunch. Despite being unabashedly derivative and frankly unoriginal, Gordon's direction is handled deftly enough to not only retain viewer interest, but employs just the right amount of tension and violence to sate even the most addicted of hemoglobinic hound. Scary? Not so much. Cool, dark, funny, focused, gory? Swipe a fat check mark across each!

We kick off in small time isolated police station, where two blue boys escort a tall, menacing brute with long hair and teeth resembling broken bottle shards. He's quarantined in his own cell, and after an alleged thorough pat down, somehow kept some kind of voodoo tincture up his sleeve. He shakes it around, mumbling shamanistic chants and whatnot. It's clear this dude is one sick and twisted Fu*k!

At roll call, we meet our heroine Danni Bannerman (Elisabeth Moss), a bright-eyed greenhorn with a penchant for horror films. She even reads a copy of 'Death Dance' (like Fangoria) in rare off spurts, catching jovial hell from her colleagues. But the jokes fade when the sergeant explicates who and why the creepy convict is being held captive. Turns out the guy is named Mellor, an 'eater' who cannibalized 32 people across 5 states, mostly female. He kept them alive for long doses, playing and torturing them until he finally ate them. His residence was said to be festooned with skin-made lamp shades and bowls carved from human skull.

As a hardened horror hound, Bannerman takes extra interest in Mellor's case, digging head long into his file. We get an imagined flashback of Mellor felling one of his victims, where a suggestive off-screen image of a tongue being lanced by a pair of gardening prunes and a frying pan of human flesh are featured. Sure this makes Bannerman a bit jumpy, but as the night progresses a barrage of eerie out of synch occurrences tip the rookie off to something afoot. Lights begin to flicker, Danni's partners Steinmetz and Mattingly oddly vanish only to reappear acting very suspicious; crude, sweaty...hungry!

When Bannerman checks in on Mellor's cell, she not only discovers that it was unlocked, but that the cannibal's body is missing. She becomes frantic, searching for her partners for help, only to find Mattingly's heart carved out of his chest and his body stuffed under a desk. After the sergeant returns and some serious vetting occurs, Bannerman begins to realize that Mellor released some kind of shape-shifting cannibalistic curse where the deadly spirit of the 'eater' has subsumed the rest of the police force. It's up to neophyte Bannerman to quell the psychotic murderer face to face. A dark, somewhat funny, brutally nihilistic ending keeps with the unresolved motif of the series as a whole, but also catapults this particular entry among the top ranking.

The best part of the episode is its efficiency. There is no wasted time or superfluous character development (which in a film is necessary, but takes too long in a commercial butchered 1 hour time slot). We instantly jump right into the scenario, opening in the setting in which we stay for the entire duration. With a single set and only a handful of actors in the show, a legitimate cabin fever type anxiety continues to mount as we the audience, essentially act as surrogate to Bannerman's character. The acting itself is competent, but the casting of said actors lends a level of verisimilitude we rarely see on TV - these look like real people, not some touched up artsy air brush action where models with perfect skin and teeth are on display. Bannerman resembles your typical everywoman, which makes the show more identifiable and the character truly sympathetic. Aside from that and just aesthetically speaking, this episode has the highest amount of carnage, on screen or otherwise (albeit done in the PG-13ish TV mien).

But if efficiency is the strong suit, originality (or lack thereof) is the episode's inevitable downfall. Off hand, I can enumerate Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Jason goes to Hell, and The Thing as points of definite story inspiration. And once we come privy to the shape shifting elements of the story, here and there parts of the episode become a little predictable. But if you think about it, of course parts are going to be predictable if confined to the safe, formulaic, low-risk format of not only general horror anthology, but network horror anthology. Given those parameters however, Gordon has achieved a rather bleak, somewhat subversive piece of work (due to the ending) that should if nothing else, serve as the bare minimum paradigm for what a Fear Itself episode should resemble.

Terror Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Originality: 1.5 out of 5
Level of Gore: 3.5 out of 5
Overall Rating:3.5 out of 5

Fear Itself airs Thursday Nights @ 10:00 P.M. on NBC and can be re-watched at nbc.com

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