Father Son Holy Gore

Foxtel’s The Kettering Incident
Episode 8: “The Homecoming”
Directed by Tony Krawitz
Written by Victoria Madden

* For a review of Episode 7, “Madness” – click here

Dr. Anna Macy (Elizabeth Debicki) is now a patient. She recognises the world around her, but continues having visions of Mother Sullivan’s Ridge, of Gillian Baxter in her red coat, of lights in the forest. The devious Dr. Fiona McKenzie (Kris McQuade) tells Anna she has lesions on her brain, and that her blood is changing. Just like her mother experienced. “I think I know who killed Chloe,” Anna tells the doctor. Although nothing she says is heeded. McKenzie reveals that someone or “something” tried running her off the road recently. She may not seem devious, but she is, certainly.
When Anna opens her little notebook, THEY’RE LOOKING FOR YOU is scrawled across it in bold lettering. Naturally, Anna’s breaking out of the hospital, not content with resting in bed while something strange and terrifying still lurks in their little Tasmanian town.
Can’t forget about Liza Grayson (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). She and Dane Sullivan (Dylan Young) were up at the ridge, last we saw them. She wallows in a big, dark hole below. Eventually, Dane is able to haul her out of a hole after searching all night to find her. “I think there are people down there,” she tells him in a state of shock. You can be sure with everything going on – secret tunnels below the ridge or not – you wouldn’t want to be around, now that state authorities are there, as well as Craig Grayson (Ben Oxenbould) and Max Holloway (Damien Garvey), and to a lesser extent Roy Macy (Anthony Phelan), trying to cover up whatever nastiness they buried there once upon a time.

Kettering, Tasmania is in a bad spot. Forget all the oddities, there’s a serious socioeconomic shift happening because of the quarantine. All sorts of work shut down, plus the mill’s being sold off. So the depth of what’s been going on becomes greater, simply for the human factor.
We start to see maybe Dr. McKenzie isn’t so bad after all. I guess she’s more so worried about Anna, and still in the dark as to anything Roy, for instance, might know. She further believes Roy is hiding something from his daughter.
Detective Brian Dutch (Matthew Le Nevez) and Constable Fergus McFadden (Henry Nixon) are still trying to get everything straight on their own heads. Fergus manages to actually impress Dutch, a little. He’s managed to figure out that Craig sent letters to Max, the threatening ones. Turns out he was trying to “teach him a lesson” for getting too close with the Greenies. I find it hard to believe Craig had anything to do with Chloe’s death, though. You can’t be sure. Not yet.
Renae Baxter (Suzi Dougherty) goes to her sister Barb Holloway’s (Sacha Horler) place. She lets her know that she’ll likely leave Kettering soon, what with her daughter never turning up and now Travis (Kevin MacIsaac) supposedly running away; except we know the difference in the latter. “I know my grief drives people away, no one can understand the pain,” says Renae. Then she reveals knowing about Barb and Dutch, even Chloe knew. Most of the town does, it seems. Yikes.
At home, Craig finds her daughter carving a moth tattoo into her arm. He’s also not pleased to know she has Chloe’s camera. Maybe I was wrong about him. He definitely has a temper. Just not so positive that correlates to murder.
Everyone is a bit on edge now. Anna’s looking for Dominic Harrold (Neil Pigot) and finds him dead, what looks like a gunshot to the face. Whatever’s happening, it is starting to get treacherous. She gathers up whatever information she can find in Dominic’s camper before heading off.
So Craig didn’t write those letters. It was his daughter. She freaks out on her father, Dutch, and Fergus. Following their altercation, Dutch notices strange markings on the girl’s shoulders. She almost has a strange strength. Afterwards, Dutch and Fergus flick through the pictures on Chloe’s camera. This leads to the detective confessing to his relationship with Barb; that’s where he was the night of Chloe’s death, having sex with her mother.
Anna has Dutch meet her. She tells him about Dominic’s death. She shows him the pictures of the Dyatlov Pass Incident-related deaths, a picture of a strange orb with markings like those over the skin of people in Kettering. Worse, Dutch reveals the murder weapon used on Chloe found in Anna’s car. “Someone‘s setting me up,” she tells Dutch. The detective further explains to Anna that her father Roy took money in the ’90s from a company dealing in radioactive waste.

Up at Harrold’s camper, Fergus and Dutch investigate. Turns out Fergus used to talk with the man about his own father’s disappearance, the tides; I suppose that’s why he’s always out kayaking in that one area. Could Fergus’ father still be somewhere out there? Maybe up at Mother Sullivan’s Ridge? Either way, they may be getting somewhere.
In a big warehouse owned by Amber Arrow Industries, source of that triangle we keep seeing, Anna makes her way illegally down into the bowels of the structure. There, she comes in contact with one of those spiked orbs, like from the picture Dominic had and the same type of one Jens Jorgenssen (Damon Gameau) was seen burying last episode. It sits behind a pane of glass, surrounded by little glowing orbs. She also finds Lofty Sullivan (Nathan Spencer), along with Jens. She confronts him about being David Owen, the fingerprint. A moment later Jens offers up some information. He found Chloe dead, so he moved her. In order to “protect” people; like himself and Anna, so Jens claims.
The mysteries deepen.
Jens, a.k.a David, shows Anna bits of what he studies. There are x-rays of lesions on the brain. Many more things. Then, Anna sees a woman she believes to be a grown up Gillian who disappears quickly. “I want to know who I am,” Anna explains desperately, but only gets more cryptic answers.
Meanwhile, Fergus finds a clue at Renae’s place: a lipstick. It was the last photo on Chloe’s camera the night of her death, laying in the grass. There’s a letter left behind signed by Renae, describing the pain and torture she suffered after the disappearance of Gillian.
Oh, my. “Chloe had to pay the price for you all,” writes Renae in her letter.
What I find most interesting is how there’s all this nasty business going on Kettering, and the death of Chloe in particular has dredged the swampy hearts of the residents, brought out the secrets, turned over many stones that might have gone un-turned otherwise. So while Chloe’s murder might have been this big mystery that felt connected to a larger mystery, it was a mere catalyst for all the dirt to be uncovered in their little town.

Wow! I understood this was a mini-series, but now we need a second series. Come on! This was fucking brilliant. It kept me guessing until the very end, even while I had so many theories bouncing around my noodle. What a great instance of writing throughout, always keeping people on their toes.
Could the Greek goddess of duality, Nephele, have inspired parts of this series? Or maybe Lamia, the mistress of Zeus, whose grief and envy of others turned her into a literal child-eating demon (similar to what Renae has become)? There are plenty of ways to tie this into Greek mythology. At least we do know that the clones are roaming Kettering. So it’s now plausible how Jens could be David, among other mysteries. No wonder Anna can barely remember anything, as she’s been cloned, and the effects are untold.
Let’s hope there’s a second season. If not, that’s fine, too. I just dig that we were given eight amazing episodes. Anybody who finds themselves let down at the end, you should go back and look through everything that’s already been given. Plenty of clues to add up and lots of mysteries are unravelled through their information.