DC's 'Swamp Thing' is off to a spectacularly scary start

Swamp Thing leans in on backwoods swampy horror and it works so well.

The first episode of DC’s newest series Swamp Thing premiered on the DC Universe streaming service Friday and it’s a fantastic kick-off to what will hopefully be a weird, exciting, and unsettling series.

Set in a small town in Louisiana, the premiere of Swamp Thing acts as an origin story and sets up a mysterious, deadly threat that looks to be perfectly suited for a man who's been turned into walking vegetation. It takes some of the best aspects of the undeniably bizarre Swamp Thing comics through the years and dives right in, which is all we really want from comic book movies and shows, right?

Swampy things

Like Gotham is to Batman, the swamp is an inextricable piece of Swamp Thing's being, and Swamp Thing does not disappoint there. This show oozes swamp vibes, breathing deep from that deep green miasma and exhaling it into every scene.

The cold open takes us to a group of boaters traversing the swamp waters at night — obviously a bad idea. It's immediately apparent that something isn't right. Something is amiss in the swamp. There's a lurking danger hidden amidst the foliage.

No, wait. The danger is the foliage.

Not only is the swamp the setting, it is also the villain. Something is causing the greenery of the swamp to turn hostile, growing and twisting and reaching with rapid determination to tear through flesh and erupt through bodies like a super-powered sapling erupting through topsoil.

The show nails the horror that seeps through the pages of some of the best Swamp Thing stories that DC has published over the years, like Scott Snyder's series that started in 2012 and Alan Moore's inimitable Swamp Thing run in the '80s.

There's a lot of great material to pull from, and even if the Swamp Thing series doesn't stick to any one comic book arc in particular, it seems to know what it's doing judging by Episode 1.

Nasty horror

Swamp Thing stars Crystal Reed as Abby Arcane, a CDC doctor who has been called back to her hometown to investigate a puzzling and deadly "disease" that's been affecting residents. A young girl has been hospitalized after collapsing, later coughing up a small piece of a plant. Hmm.

In looking for answers, Abby stumbles into biologist Alec Holland (Andy Bean), who is also looking into the local phenomenon from a different angle. And we see the girl's father, Eddy, a corpse standing over his bathroom sink with roots woven through his entire body, a tangle of plant life thrusting out of his open mouth like a stream of leafy vomit frozen in midair. He's clearly been killed by plants.

Frankly, it's gross, and Swamp Thing doesn't shy away from it at all. It lingers on the body as it's thoroughly examined. And then when the plants come to life once more thanks to Alec's prodding research, things only get more disgusting.

It's great.

Swamp Thing's origins

It may appear to Swamp Thing newcomers that the violent vegetation is a product of the Swamp Thing, but that's not the case. No, Swamp Thing is a good guy (generally).

Spoilers: Swamp Thing is a creature that used to be a human named Alec Holland.

Things are only going to get stranger

It's not exactly an origin that people have been exposed to over and over like Batman's and Spider-Man's. Dedicating nearly and hour's worth of show to pre-Swamp Thing character development is completely warranted.

While Batman can take off his cowl to live as Bruce Wayne and Spider-Man can remove his mask and go back to being Peter Parker, once Alec turns into Swamp Thing, there's no going back.

That means things are only going to get stranger as the show examines Swamp Thing's sense of self and his connection to the Green — the network of plant life that connects the entire planet, which Swamp Thing can tap into at will.

If the rest of the first season continues to be as strong as the origin story, this could be once of the best things DC's produced in a long time.