PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Some things should always be sacred. For context, I’m speaking of listening to your favorite part of a song or album, important dialogue in a movie, or your favorite scene from Evil Dead Rise. But try and get your children to share your beliefs! Some things you just don’t talk over and they deserve our undivided attention. I’m just sayin’. Well, that’s where fiction podcasts come in. It’s there my AirPods can transport me to an alien invasion, haunted woods, or a serial killer hunt undistracted and immersed. Audiobooks are one thing, but today fiction podcasts or audio dramas cast a wider experience for listeners. With more production, sound fx, actors, and freedom from publishers and distributors.
So when I checked out what was trending on podcasts last week, I was instantly intrigued by the incredible cover art for Deviser. I pressed play and persisted to binge all seven episodes and had to write up for PopHorror immediately the experience.
Let’s see the cover art.
DEVISER is a Sci-Fi Horror Audio Drama written, directed, acted, produced, designed, and engineered by Harlan Guthrie (Malevolent – 2020). All art is done by Rob Donaldson.
Deviser Podcast Synopsis:
Son wakes up aboard a spaceship bound for Earth in an effort to recolonize. What he discovers however will change everything he knows about his world and himself.
The Setup
Son has hellish violent nightmares that seem familiar in a premonition foreboding kind of way. He comes to with a mental fog with an Artificial Intelligent assistant named “Dad” reassuring Son was just in a deep sleep.
He is the acting Skelton crew of the ‘Fido’, a long-distance transport vessel with 4,000 deep cryo passengers in hibernation. His only company is Dad and his companion – you guessed it, “Dog”.
Son is so dazed he can’t remember his login passwords for his captain logs, but on day 286, it’s anything but business as usual. His AI can handle everything aboard the ship and Son’s existence feels arbitrary. He’s modest that his presence is simply a placeholder and that in another 200 days, they’ll be back on earth and his real work will begin. But for now, this ship can think for and drive itself.
Son can’t tell if things are wearing on him, but his role feels hollow, things seem off. Wrong even. Now the situation starts to go sideways. The ship begins to have power outages, doors aren’t unlocking. There aren’t windows on the ship and Son’s access is restricted. There are mysterious fluids on keypads and leaking from under doors.
“Why are there no stars” ~Anonymous
He begins to question Dad’s motives. He grows paranoid that someone awoke from cryo-stasis and is sabotaging the ship when he discovers “why are there no stars” written in red substance on a wall. To make things worse, his dog brings him a human finger. Son even witnesses a hideous red devil-looking entity aboard the ship. As he challenges Dad’s minimizing misguidance, Son forces his own agenda by inspecting dads central core and powering him down.
Not remembering the locations of what room is which on the ship, forgetting passwords, not understanding the purposes of areas of the vessel, The growing unfamiliarity Son is enduring is becoming life-threatening while a surreal truth begins to unravel.
The Payoff
Sometimes it can take a few episodes of an audio thriller to really grab me, just like a novel, my mind can reject and wander off. That definitely wasn’t the case with Deviser.
In each scene I kept going back and forth trying to guess Son’s role and if his AI could be trusted. Needless to say, it wasn’t predictable for me. The plot kept me in the dark all the way to the final episode. The finale was fruitful and advantageous to the likes of Scott Ridley, Lovecraft, and may I even say Mary Shelley.
Being a full audio experience, the details matter, and not just in a Matt Murdock kinda way. The descriptions, echoes of background settings, and voice acting really put me on the Fido ship. It felt dark, cold, and lonely. Deviser was a completely immersed journey of baffled terror. There was painful gore, chilling discoveries, and dangerous conflicts that had me put down everything I was doing just so I could listen even closer.
Deviser Final Thoughts
I had an absolute blast listening to Harlan Guthrie’s audio drama Deviser. With a total runtime of around 158 minutes in 7 episodes, the ride wasn’t cumbersome or bogged down with a ton of ads. The passion really shows up from the creator Harlan who got the idea from the growing world of AI art and the ethics around using it. Harlan created Deviser without a budget, actors, a crowdfunding campaign, or financial help of any kind beyond his Patreon supporters. Harlan wrote the scripts in mid-March and on April 1st he sat down to record and now all 7 Episodes of Deviser are ready to be sent to you as of May 1st.
You can find Deviser anywhere you listen to podcasts, digital, and audiobooks. Check out the trailer below.
