| "Malocostraca" | |
|---|---|
| Series Beyond the Dark Season 1, Episode 3 | |
| |
| Air date | September 26th, 2022 |
| Writers | Charles Pieper |
| Director | Charles Pieper |
| Producers | Case Barden; Joel Garay; Boman Modine; Travis Cultreri; Kimmie Yan; Jordan Daniel Chesney; Bob Clark; Yvette Clark; Anthony Pieper |
| Starring | Charlie Pecoraro; Amber Bollinger |
| Episode guide | |
| Previous "Midnight Clear" |
Next "Pipe" |
"Malacostraca" is the third episode of the Beyond the Dark horror anthology series. It was written and directed by Charles A. Pieper. All episodes of the series aired on various online streaming platforms on September 26th, 2022.
Plot[]
Chris and his wife Sophie are on a beach. Sophie peacefully sleeps while sunbathing while Chris sits nearby struggling on his next writing project. As he jots furiously in his journal, Sophie begins moaning in ecstasy. His wife is pregnant, and he sees an image of a giant hermit grab emerging from her stomach. He shouts to alert her, but it turns out to just be a regular sized hermit crab crawling across her belly. She awakens with a start, screams "What the hell, Chris?!?", and then storm off back to their house.
That evening, Chris goes into the bedroom where Sophie is waiting in bed. She apologizes for freaking out, and invites him to her side where she begins kissing him. Later, Chris retires to his study and sits at his typewriter smoking a pipe.
Months pass and Sophie begins to show. She beckons Chris to come to her to feel the baby kicking. Chris places his hand on her stomach and tells her "I don't feel anything". Soon after, Sophie goes into labor inside the house. Chris assists and Sophie gives birth to a mutant cockroach child. She commands Chris to find something to cut the umbilical. Sophie seems unaffected by the physicality of her child, and names her Emily.
Later, Chris reaches for the child and hallucinates that it bites his finger off. Sophie dismisses his reaction and points out that he is fine. Chris tries throwing himself into his work, but Sophie grows frustrated with him and his apparent neglect over their child.
That evening while Sophie is asleep, Chris takes a large lobster pot and fills it with water and sets it to boil. He then goes into the nursery and takes up his shellfish child and brings it into the kitchen. Sophie awakens, and sensing something wrong, races into the kitchen. Chris drops the child into the boiling water. As he does so, he suddenly hears the cries of pain of a human child. In his insanity, he mutters to his wife, "I found our ending, Sophie". I found our ending".
Cast[]
Starring[]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Charlie Pecoraro | Chris |
| Amber Bollinger | Sophie |
Guest Starring[]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| None | None |
Co-Starring[]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| None | None |
Notes & Trivia[]
- This episode is rated TV-MA.
- The running time on this episode is 16 minutes.
- Director and writer Charles A. Pieper is credited as Charles Pieper in this episode.
- Actress Amber Marie Bollinger is credited as Amber Bollinger in this episode.
- On IMDB, this episode has a Starmeter rating of 5.1 out of 10 based on 10 user votes.
- This episode was originally released as a film short, "Malacostraca" on September 25th, 2018. It was screened at Panic Fest on January 26th, 2019.
- Malacostracas are the second largest of the six classes of pancrustaceans just behind hexapods, containing about 40,000 living species, divided among 16 orders. Its members, the malacostracans, display a great diversity of body forms and include crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill, prawns, woodlice, amphipods, mantis shrimp, tongue-eating lice and many other less familiar animals.
Allusions[]
- There are no allusions available for this episode at this time. Be the first to add some! Just click on the edit tab under the section heading and start typing. An allusion is an incidental reference made to a character, person, event or other miscellaneous piece of media that can be found somewhere in the episode itself. In most cases, this refers to characters or events from previous episodes.
Quotes[]
- There are no quotes available for this episode at this time. Be the first to add some! Just click on the edit tab under the section heading and start typing. The preferred format for quotes is an asterisk, followed by the character's name (bold and hyper-linked), semi-colon then the quote itself (without quotation marks. Quotes should be separated by four elipses (....) unless multiple quotes are used between characters as part of a conversation.
See also[]
External Links[]
- "Malacostraca" at IMDB
- "Malacostraca" at Trakt TV
- "Malacostraca" at the TV Database
- "Malacostraca" at Themoviedb.org
Gallery[]
Keywords[]
Births | Cockroaches | Insects | Scissors | Severed fingers | Smoking