Horror once focused on the moment where a protagonist or a character met the monster or faced their fear, a single moment of terror that was like an adrenaline shot to the reader’s heart. However, horror has recently looked not just at terrors attacking characters in the past but traumas from the past that have buried deep underneath the characters’ skin, festering throughout their lives. One such person is the investigator at the center of Dark Spaces: Dungeon. Written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Hayden Sherman, this entry into the Dark Spaces anthology series looks at how many people live in dungeons of their own making.
The story begins with tech entrepreneur Tyler Letts who’s left the fast-paced lifestyle of New York for a quieter life in the country. And while the view outside his window is scenic, it’s the dungeon that’s under his basement that has him calling the FBI (this despite the message painted on the wall that says “Tell No One”). Enter Special Agent Madok, who knows that this is the kind of chamber used by the Keep, an individual whose MO is to keep his prisoners in boxes designed to break bones and wills. Madok is all too aware of the Keeper’s methods, and when Tyler’s son goes missing, Tyler must match wits with the demented dungeon keeper while the clock ticks.
Snyder’s story reads at first like a straightforward procedural, but as mentioned before, the Keep doesn’t just kill his victims. Sherman’s artwork renders in gruesome detail the Keep’s victims after they’ve spent time in his dungeon. People might be tempted to call this a Saw rip-off, especially considering the elaborate designs of these dungeons, but Snyder’s work is more psychological, delving deep into the trauma is both a help and a hindrance to agent Madok, and the secrets held by both him and the Keep drive the conflict of this work to a shocking twist that just may trap the reader.
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