Joe Hill's Locke & Key graphic novel is a delightful series filled with suspense, science fiction, horror, and laughs. The story is about a family who lives in a very unusual house filled with keys that do unusual things. The magic includes things like transporting your body into a hall of mirrors, or your soul outside your body.
As with any Hill work, there are some disturbingly chilling moments in the series that are bound to make you think while you fall asleep... if you still can sleep. The show walks the line between gruesome horror and the classic scary story just enough to make it almost family-friendly, and while the show might be okay for teens, but these ten most chilling moments will rattle even adult viewers' bones.
When Echo Answered Back
The real fun of the show began when Bode sneaked into The Well House and discovered the "well lady" as he called Dodge before knowing her name. Anytime you see a kid lean over an old well, you know it's going to be bad news, but when he called down, "Are you my echo?" and she answered, "Yes, I am... Bode," we all screamed for him to get the heck out of dodge, not knowing how ironic that might be.
Oh, Bode, if you had only not listened to the creepy yet charming lady in the well. Didn't your absent-minded mama teach you not to talk to strangers, especially if they already know your name?
Head Keys Opening Necks
Sticking a key into the back of someone's neck to open up, enter and explore their mind might sound like a great way to find out what your mom wants for her birthday... No, no it doesn't, and from meeting Kinsey's fear to even entering Bode's fun room, going into the minds of people in Locke & Key is more of a nightmare.
Keys shouldn't go into necks, bodies shouldn't stand like still mannequins as people are somehow able to double up and enter their own heads... and yet here we are. What if you jab the Head Key in too far and damage your spinal cord?
When Kinsey's Fear Came Alive
For a moment on the show, the scariest character wasn't the mysterious Dodge or the unhinged Sam Lesser but Kinsey's own fear come to life. Taking out your fear and burying it sounds like a pretty badass move and it certainly gave Kinsey courage for a time, but when her fear resurfaced and started to cause havoc, it was one of the most terrifying moments on the show.
Who are we kidding? Meeting Kinsey's fear in the first place was pretty scary and made us all wonder what our own fears might look like in the flesh, which surely caused plenty of nightmares for viewers.
Dodge Is Really Lucas
Discovering that Dodge was a shady villain was bad enough. When she threatened Bode in his room and even bested his bear trap, viewers could feel their hearts in their throats. But once the big reveal came that Dodge was actually the missing/drowned Lucas, our heads pretty much exploded and we were terrified on the implications it meant.
Was he good turned bad? How had he survived all along? Was he truly Lucas all along? We learned the answers to that question were both yes and no, and even at the end of the season Dodge certainly wasn't finished toying with us yet.
When Bode Became A Ghost
While the Netflix show is much tamer than the graphic novel, where some frames are downright terrifying and Dodge's reveal was even more sinister (remember the mirror?), seeing little Bode's prone body lying there while his ghost flew away from him terrified many viewers, particularly those with kids. All jokes about eating babies aside, the loss of a kid is always difficult to see.
Luckily the recovery period from this sight was quick as we realized Bode could return to his body and not be gone for good, but when he entered ghost mode again later it was still hard to watch.
The Mirror Key
Halls of mirrors are already incredibly disturbing: they're jarring, disorienting and can even cause one to panic. They're an absolute nightmare for people already creeped out by mirrors, which is why they're so effective. When the Lockes used the Mirror Key and were confronted with evil versions of themselves, the looks on the faces of their evil counterparts horrified us. It seemed obvious that they weren't trustworthy, yet follow themselves they did. Luckily they escaped without becoming another pile of bones.
It also left us to question just how many people have been lost in those mirrors, and who were they in the first place?
When Their Father's Murderer Came Back
While most of the threats in the show are of a supernatural nature, there's also the very real murderer of Rendell Locke, Sam Lesser, to contend with. A boy with a home life problem who could have been a much better person had he been loved by adults in his life, he mirrors some of the flesh-and-blood villains that Joe Hill's father, Stephen King, has placed within his own supernatural worlds, like Henry Bowers in It.
Witnessing the first attack on the Locke family was brutal enough, so when Lesser broke out with the Matchstick Key to terrify the family again, all of us clutched our pearls.
Humiliating The School Bully
While we all love a good comeuppance, there's usually a line between sweet revenge and going too far that the good guys know not to cross. Without her fear to guide her, a bold Kinsey crossed the line and then some, using the Music Box Key to force her bully, Eden Hawkins, to embarrass herself to the point of utter humiliation.
The horror here wasn't just waiting to see what Kinsey would make Eden do but watching an otherwise kind character be cruel. Kinsey's actions made us question her own ethics and empathize with an otherwise pretty unsympathetic character up to that point.
Dodge Offed A Kid In Front Of A Subway Train
Up until this point of the show, Dodge could have been all talk for what we knew. She'd been cruel and hurt Bode by grabbing him, and scared him to the point where he finally sought out help (long after he should have told someone in the first place), but for all we knew, her threats had been empty.
When she went to retrieve the Matchstick Key to give to Sam Lesser to aid him in his escape and kidnapping of the Lockes, she pushed one of the kids who took it in front of a moving subway train without a second glance, proving her sociopath nature in seconds.
Their Father's Murder
The attack on Rendell Locke, only alluded to between bits of memories and blood spatter at first, was the most harrowing scene in the show to watch. We're living in a time of extreme violence, where there are more mass shootings in America than days in a year, more guns than people and few politicians willing to do anything to stop it other than offer weak platitudes. In some ways, we've become desensitized to it; in others, witnessing this scene was like seeing what's happened to someone we know, or could happen to one of us at any time.
The horror and tragedy, from seeing their parents shot to the kids' own frozen terror, was a mirror of the most terrifying moments of reality.