The Twilight Zone Episode 145: The Masks

An old man on his deathbed forces members of his family to wear creepy masks until midnight.

Episode Summary

An old, rich, dying man invites his horrible family members to his mansion on the night of Mardis Gras to tell them how awful they are.

He makes them all wear creepy masks (each representing a different vice) that they must not remove until midnight, otherwise they won’t get any inheritance money.

Once midnight strikes, the old man dies. The family members remove their masks and find that their faces now match the masks; their inner monsters have come to the surface!

Thoughts

Entertaining in parts – I mean, who doesn’t love seeing horrible people getting their just desserts. The masks were suitably creepy and the family was a hoot, be it the daughter constantly looking at herself in in the mirror, to the son who looked 10 years older than I think he was supposed to be.

But a lot of  the episode felt empty. It reminded me of Where is Everybody? in that regard, where it went on and on (in this case, the old man telling off his family), and you just kept waiting for the inevitable twist at the end…only this twist was one you could see a mile away.

But the most interesting thing about The Masks is some of the chatter I’ve seen online, that maybe the old man was the real horrible person and that the family didn’t deserve their (permanent?) “mask punishment.” The bully son, a cause of pain and suffering, definitely deserved it, but I’m not quite sure about the other three.