‘The Madness of David Judge’ is a Twisted and Exciting Miniseries [Review]

In recent years, horror in the miniseries format has had a reemergence, and has become more and more of a popular format in the genre. Some of my earliest memories of becoming a horror obsessive are from stumbling into watching those Stephen King miniseries’ from the nineties. I remember being staggered by The Stand, feeling dizzy after The Langoliers, being stunned by The Shining adaptation compared to the original Kubrick version and of course, being horror-struck and panic-stricken by It. I don’t want to be too general here and disregard tons of horror television that has come before and after, like The Walking Dead or The Twilight Zone, but those are television series operating in a totally different realm than the horror miniseries. For me, I don’t remember watching any horror miniseries, post the King nineties, up until the release of Harper’s Island, which was a sensation at the time and a cult classic now. Harper’s Island was truly a great series and wild experience, with tons of schlock and flaws, but beautiful in its eccentricity and uniqueness, especially for a slasher. It was a one-of-a-kind thing that had no business being such. I still can’t believe it hasn’t been replicated to some extent even all these years later. That was 2009, and it wasn’t until 2018 where I felt this format was fully reinvigorated again with the release of Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House. Flanagan’s masterpiece, in my opinion, which kicked off a run for him where he kept going back to the miniseries format with Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher, all three being for Netflix. This format suited Flanagan incredibly well in these particular cases as it allowed for him to multiply the scope of the story by 10x and allow for the stories to breathe with a wider range of central characters and story lines more so than if they were just feature films. There is a new miniseries that I would say takes on some of the tone, structure and design of those aforementioned series’, called, The Madness of David Judge, which is now available to stream. The Madness of David Judge is captivating and unique, and I have a lot of thoughts, so, let’s get into it…

The Madness of David Judge, which was written and directed by Mike Mayhall, is a psychological horror thriller centered around a man, the titular David Judge, who is a horror author that has recently been made aware of his wife’s infidelity in the most brutal way possible, in a television interview. The overarching mystery of The Madness of David Judge comes from the disappearance of his wife and to avoid spoilers, I won’t go into great detail, but I will say that in its five episode run, The Madness of David Judge has plenty of twists and turns to keep the audience guessing throughout, and plenty of blood to satisfy the bloodthirsty crowd. The Madness of David Judge is about the unraveling of a man who can’t get a grip on his reality and tumbles further and further down into the abyss of his own mind in this traumatic state that he finds himself in by way of heavy hallucinations, and no control of the darkness seemingly brought on by this life altering event…

David Judge, played by Jeremy Sande, is a seemingly very successful horror author who lives in the New Orleans area, and spends the entirety of this series at a beautiful waterside home with an extensive dock and a great view. David’s wife, Samantha, played by Sarah S. Fisher, who was as mentioned previously, unfaithful to David and after being discovered, is now estranged. David and Samantha remain in contact though, and her presence haunts him in both reality and in David’s imagination. Early on in the story, while David is just trying to move on with his life and live quietly, writing and just surviving the humiliation, Samantha goes missing. Reality becomes obscured for both David as well as the audience, and throughout the five episodes, David finds himself in the throes of drifting further and further away from sanity, the audience finds itself just as disoriented due to the fact the story is told through only David’s perspective, and because of this, the other characters that are in David’s life are caught in the crossfire of this war going on in his mind, and from there, chaos ensues…

To start, I found the most effective aspect of the show was the visual representation of one losing sanity, and fully melting down Jack Torrance-from-The Shining style. The hallucinations are visually arresting, well-conceived and really impressively executed. The filmmaking team deserves a lot of credit for the visual design of the horror aspects of the show, and to be honest, I had wished that they leaned into this far more aggressively as it was so effective that it left me wanting more of it. David’s hallucinations involve a slew of different things. For one, there is a constant lack of clarity with what is real and what is being imagined. The trigger that would mostly occur to signify a hallucination would be the appearance of blackness. Whether it be various forms of dark matter and web-like figures protruding from David’s surroundings, or the eyes of a person David is conversing with. I really enjoyed the hell out of the black eyes effect used, as it made everyone around David a potential threat at any moment. The impact it had on me was I was always waiting for the eyes to flip to pitch black, so even if I was anticipating it and could see it coming to an extent, it still was effective every time. The way that effect was utilized made the story all the better, and added a real scare factor…

Another aspect of The Madness of David Judge that I enjoyed was the beautiful location. From David’s house itself, to the Shrimp dock where his friends Mikey and Lizzy, played by Dean J. West and Sylvia Grace Crim, respectively, lived and worked, to the exterior of David’s house on the water with an outstanding looking dock area overlooking the Gulf, it was all phenomenal and the location acted as a character in its own right and injected so much life into the story. Even though plenty of productions utilize New Orleans as a filming location, The Madness of David Judge made it look more beautiful than most…

The performances in The Madness of David Judge were all quite effective, and nobody felt like they were out of place or performing in a different movie. Everyone seemed to understand the assignment and that is a credit to both the performers of course, but also the direction. Playing a character whose mind is collapsing must be both a ton of fun, but also a real challenge. Sande, I thought, did a great job of wearing the weariness all over his face, looking defeated in the present, while also looking full-faced and bright eyed in the flashbacks, before everything went to hell in a hand-basket. Other than Sande, the supporting cast around him was both very charming and very menacing. The role of Samantha seemed like another very difficult role to play, as that character is pretty much always under duress or covered in blood. Sarah S. Fisher did a really great job in this one portraying this character who needed to be both untrustworthy to a degree, but also empathetic for the story to work. Everyone else from the detective who is heading the investigation into Samantha’s disappearance, Detective Skyler, played by Sherri Eakin, to the aforementioned friends of the Judge’s, to even the creator of the series himself, Mike Mayhall, who plays Samantha’s new lover, Richard. Across the board, everyone made sense for their roles and brought a unique energy to the table, especially Detective Skyler as the story plays out…

As much as I loved this show, there were some times when I would be scratching my head wondering ‘Wait, what?’. But, I was lucky enough to be able to speak with the creator of the series, Mike Mayhall, and he was nice enough to oblige me with some of my questions. My first one, and this has been a consistent qualm of mine throughout my life as a watcher of movies in general, is how much an out of place needle drop takes me out of a movie or series, especially a horror movie or series. The Madness of David Judge has a sequence where David, in a rare moment of bliss, but more likely a stupor, goes through his daily routine as an uplifting, slower song plays in the background. It is one of the few needle drops in the show, and upon first watch it completely took me out of the story. As I hashed this out with Mayhall, there was a rhyme and a reason to that decision, and although his explanation makes perfect sense and on another watch I’m sure I will be more receptive to it, but the fact remains that at the time of first watch, it took me out of the story briefly. I would say this is more of a personal thing for me, as I am inherently more of an original score guy and much less of a soundtrack/needle drop guy barring rare circumstances. Would be interested to hear the consensus on this as it pertains to David Judge though, as the reasoning from the horse’s mouth itself makes total sense…

The only other qualm I had with The Madness of David Judge is about as nit picky as it gets, but I really want to hash it out for the sake of conversation with Mayhall, was that I was curious as to why The Madness of David Judge had to be a miniseries, as opposed to a movie. Mike has a history with television filmmaking, but also has directed movies, which had me curious as to why this had to be a miniseries, and if it was intended to be that way from the jump. To circle back to the top of this piece, I had mentioned The Haunting of Hill House as a comparison for The Madness of David Judge. The premises are obviously different and do not share any story or thematic similarities, but just in terms of structure, The Haunting of Hill House is a miniseries adaptation of a novel. But, the original adaptations of that novel by Shirley Jackson were feature films. The reason the Mike Flanagan miniseries adaptation, as opposed to the Robert Wise film adaptation, I’m assuming, was made into a miniseries was because of the large scope created by the ensemble cast of characters who all had an arc to be covered. I’d say The Madness of David Judge, on the other hand, is a miniseries that is pretty much entirely centered around the point of view of one character. After discussing with Mike, it was initially going to be a feature film, but there was just way more meat on the bone than previously anticipated by Mayhall, as well as the filmmaking team, so the expansion into this story being a miniseries made total sense. But, I always believe that a story of this nature, centered around one person with a smaller scope that is just their immediate world will always play more effectively as a movie, just for the reason that so much time spent with one character, in one place, can get tiresome, no matter how great the performance is or how great the filmmaking itself is. The Madness of David Judge is only five episodes, so it is basically just a long movie to a degree, but after it was over I couldn’t help but think it was just a hell of a lot of time spent with David, and I’d be intrigued to see a cut of this miniseries that is brought down to movie length and plays as a feature film. As I was mentally cutting it in my stupid brain though, and after hashing it out with Mike, there is so much value in letting scenes breathe with extra time. And, with a slimmed down version, there might need to be some tough cuts made, like for example there is a neighbor character, Christian, played by Cotton Yancey, who is a mysterious friendly figure and plays an important role to the story. Without that character, a big piece of David’s descent into madness would fall by the wayside, and it would be a big missed opportunity…

So, I came to the conclusion that although an entire miniseries told through the point of view of one character can get exhausting, especially when that character is becoming undone at the seams, it is way more effective to become undone at the seams slowly and patiently, and not rapidly like it would play in a feature film, at least in this instance, which is a credit to Mayhall and his filmmaking team to make that work. I will say, to be frank, it’s super interesting to watch something but then have it contextualized for you by the creator itself afterwards. I’d say my opinions still ring true even after discussion, but the added context really does make you look back and have an appreciation for things you might have missed the first time. That can always backfire to a degree and be a little bit of a slippery slope, but in this case, it made me love the series all the more…

Overall, I was wholly impressed with The Madness of David Judge on so many levels. The more I think about it, the more I find it impressive that even though I was confused as hell multiple times throughout the story as to what is going on, when you revisit so many of the scenes, or go back and re-watch, it was clearly intended to be difficult to decipher as the audience is supposed to be right there with the main character in terms of clarity. The ending had me confused in a good way, and it made me want to go back and watch again to see what I missed to connect the dots a little more effectively. This is a great trait for a series to have, and improves its re-watchability quite a bit. The scares were there, and even though I wanted more, this is meant to be a slower burn story that seems less interested in the typical brand of scares and more interested in the psychological warfare aspects…

Lastly, this is a production that really did feel like a group of people who get along in real life, and got together to make something that they can all be proud of. It’s a good miniseries, there was clearly a ton of thought put into this and I hope to god that this story wasn’t inspired by anything from the creators’ actual real lives. If that’s the case, then I am sorry to even mention that, as it must be a sore subject. Even though the story ventures into incredibly dark and quite honestly, depressing as hell at times, there was a good energy in this miniseries that made it an enjoyable watch, which can’t always be said for other series’ or movies that are being made in this genre.. I was really impressed with this series, and I recommend it for anyone looking for a new twisted psychological and exciting miniseries to watch…

Wicked Horror Rating: 6.5/10

From Mayhem Productions, Prism Light Pictures & Hapax Creative, The Madness of David Judge is available to stream now!