DEVISER is a Sci-Fi Horror Audio Drama, created by Harlan Guthrie. In this series 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.
Director(s)
Writer(s)
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Trigger Warnings
I somehow hadn’t heard of Deviser until I came across it on a random TikTok (@fictiontal) listing some recommended horror podcasts. I’d listened to plenty of audio dramas before, but I’m always on the hunt for new ones to add to my never-ending collection. Let’s take a dive into this dark, dark nightmare of an audio drama.
Spoilers will be listed in a spoiler toggle at the bottom of this review if you wish to read them.
I Loved
- The fact that all of this was done so flawlessly by one guy. Writing, directing, editing, Harlan Guthrie is a seriously talented Renaissance man and I’m extremely excited to see what else he can come up with.
- The acting stands out with a thin cast, where both Dad and Son are played by Guthrie (with the occasional little guy thrown in there, you’ll know what I mean when you listen). You can feel every anxious and terrified breath Son takes while navigating this claustrophobic Noah’s ark in space he’s trapped in. I also loved Dad’s monotone, HAL 9000 voice, his role and acting gets a lot more introspective near the end, which I’ll go into more in the spoilers section.
- The writing is a fairly standard “in space no one can hear you scream” story at first, but traverses into a Harlan Ellison-esque tale about what it truly means to be human and what humanity represents. The revelation near the end stands out as my favorite part of this entire journey, mostly because I eat storylines like that up, but otherwise because it’s as beautiful a tale of obsession and madness as it is utterly horrifying.
- For sound design, I mentioned Son’s terror filled breaths and screams earlier, but seriously the whole of the sound design makes me feel incredibly lonely and claustrophobic, while also making my skin crawl when the body horror steps in. I found myself hollering to my radio in my car more than once when different squelches and screams would come over the radio. I actually kept myself from listening to this at night because I tried once and it creeped me out too much 😅, so I kept it to listening on my commute to and from work.
- Dog. Just Dog. Dog’s existence. All the Dog.
I Liked
- The body horror. The only reason I’m putting this in my Liked section instead of Loved is because I wanted just a bit more. I wanted to delve a little further into the testing and torture and, ultimately, the final horror we get at the end. Especially the final horror we get at the end.
Overall
This is the type of horror made just for me and I could barely leave my car and stop listening, even when I’d get to my stop. Harlan Guthrie is a new favorite of mine when it comes to audio dramas, and I’ll definitely be listening to Malevolent next to find out what other terrors he can come up with.
If you want to give Deviser a listen, you can find it on any podcast app of your choosing. Visit https://www.deviser.ca/ for more information or for further content warnings.
Spoilers
Warning: Spoilers are below, don’t read unless you’ve already listened or don’t mind spoilers.
Click to reveal spoilers
Alright, now I can talk about this ending. We start getting the reveal of what’s actually happening on this “spaceship” in episodes 6 & 7. Dad returns, in fact, he was always there, observing and listening to his Son. Dad is akin to AM from “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream”, but instead of despising humanity, he loves it excessively, to the point of obsession and attempting to recreate it in an image beyond his comprehension. This explains why Son’s clone mentions that Son looks slightly off, and why Son isn’t disturbed by his extra teeth, odd iris, and four fingers instead of five. Dad is essentially what AI is to us today, trying to recreate what humans create with the media it has, but never quite getting it right. He’s also his own version of Victor Frankenstein, using the character as his main inspiration for his pursuit of humanity, creating and destroying each “human being” he makes in his quest for the perfect human, failing to realize that Victor was the villain of his story, not the hero.
Dad is so obsessed with what he determines to be his perfect Son, that he wants to join him in the new world of being human, and brings out an un-finished monstrosity with muscle and sinew and heart exposed in all his horrific glory. This had to be my favorite part of this audio drama, because this is the type of horror that terrifies me the most. Something so completely obsessed with you, whether that be love or hate, that it will essentially crawl into your skin and do everything it can to make you happy or terrify you? Something that declares “I love you Son” after killing thousands before you just to create you? That’s the heart of horror for me, personally.
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