Ethereal beauty Yuko in 'The Terror: Infamy' is the devil in disguise about to unleash fresh horrors
At the first glace, 'The Terror: Infamy's' Yuko (Kiki Sukezane) is the most ethereal beauty gliding along the surface like an angel reincarnate. She is the type of woman you notice in a crowd and are so mesmerized by her beauty that you spend a good two minutes basking in the glory of her perfection. But as the story progresses in the first episode, you come to know that glow and sheen is not all there is to her. By the end of the episode, you see her peeling off the perfect porcelain skin on her face to reveal the dark, decaying matter underneath and you know this is it. This is the ghost in the second season of the AMC anthology and there's nothing but the horror that she is about to unleash.
While this season's prime element of horror happens to be the shameful reality of Japanese Internment Camps in America during the Second World War, the many fleeting easter eggs and blink-and-you'll-miss instances of spirits on the screen do a pretty neat job at establishing the sow's ground in the genre. And for that, we have Yuko to thank. She appears right at the beginning when the main character, aka golden boy Chester Nakayama (Derek Mio), is taking a walk with Amy - the girl his family wants to set him up with. As just the two of them walk together towards the dock, a faint figure appears in the background, clad in the outlet Yuko is seen wearing later on the show.
In the wake of Masayo Furuya's (Yuki Morita) mysterious ritualistic suicide, we see the woman's body being rolled off the casket in her funeral as a strong gush of wind hits, sparking of suspicion and rumors about evil spirits plaguing the family. Soon after, Masayo's grieving husband, Hideo comes across Yuko and with just one glance at her, he goes blind with agonizing pain in his eyes. Even when Chester meets Yuko at the town brothel where he chooses to exclude himself from his friend's bachelor party indulgences, there is something very off about her. She appears calm and composed, gliding through the surface, going about her way making tea for their guests, but in all of that soothing aura she radiates, there is always an eerie vibe to the way she speaks about things.
She invites Chester into her creepy mask-adorned bedroom for tea-leaf reading and predicts his future, which, for some reason, Chester feels more than willing to act upon. As Yuko tells Chester of the darkness lying in his path, blocking out the light, Chester decides to sneak to his pregnant girlfriend's bedroom, to stop her from taking the abortion potion Masayo had brewed for her. A bit intense, but it also establishes the sheer authority Yuko has on anybody who comes across her.
The mystery and horrors plaguing the town unfold to reveal even far sinister things when Yuko is alone in her bedroom, about to take off her facial makeup and notices something off on her skin. One would assume it's a zit or at the most, a wrinkle perhaps, but then Yuko starts scratching the area and pulling off her skin to reveal black, decaying matter inside. And she doesn't stop at that; she bends a regular needle and begins sewing her skin up to perfection as if just seconds ago the layer wasn't peeling off in a very 'insidious' manner.
The best thing about Yuko is how otherworldly innocent and naive she looks. For all we know, she is an evil spirit out to seek vengeance on the Nakayama family, or even the Japanese-American community in Terminal Island; but for now, with the way she has gone about her little evil schemes sprinkling them here and there, one can only imagine what else she could be up to if Chester's child is carried to full term. Yuko doesn't look like the kind to mess with and you should be very, very scared.
'The Terror: Infamy' airs every Monday at 9 p.m. only on AMC.
