Much like The Monsters are Due on Maple Street, this episode is an exercise in suspense. Rather than seeing anything in particular, we’re caught up in what we think is happening, or rather what we think might be happening, and that’s worse than anything that might actually be happening.
In this case, one family has prepared themselves by building a bomb shelter, and when the warning comes, they load up into the shelter, ready to weather the storm. Then the neighbors start knocking, wanting to be let in, thinking there is room for just one more. Then the next neighbor comes, and the next, and before you know it, everyone is at each other’s throats and the shelter lies in ruins, and no one is safe.
And just like that the alarm is called off because it was all just a drill, and everyone wants to go back to the way things were, but we’ve seen how everyone acts, and we’ve seen what lurks just beneath the surface of these people. Terrifying, really, that the monsters aren’t coming from outside. They are right next door.
