Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

THE DARK Season 3

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Season 3 of the moody, dark, and apocalyptic Netflix series THE DARK concluded what can only be described as one of the most truly remarkable science-fiction series, so odd and complex it’s one of those TV series you’re surprised got made. Season 3 builds upon the complex relationships and central time travel mystery from the first two seasons while adding another dimension and bringing the whole thing to a powerful and decisive finish.

This was an enjoyable but difficult series to watch. I would have appreciated its intricate details more if I were able to binge-watch it from start to finish, which begs for a second viewing now that the work is complete and I kind of know what’s going on, who’s who in what time period, and how they’re related. The show is not really three discrete seasons but a single vision meticulously planned from the first episode. And holy crap, it’s incredible when you see the whole thing.

During the second season, I have to admit I began to get frustrated with it. Too often, characters appear from offstage to deliver speeches short on real details and long on bland philosophy, while the time travel itself started to rely more and more heavily on the bootstrap paradox. This is a paradox in time travel where, for example, a man has a child, the child goes back in time and has his own child, and that child turns out to be boy’s father (each is the father of the other), resulting in time travel literally creating people, events, and objects living in a time loop. In many movies such as ARRIVAL, it provides an answer or solution that crashes into the plot as deus ex machina, and in THE DARK, it started to feel like the TV show LOST, constantly teasing mysteries that once revealed didn’t really mean anything. THE DARK, however, fooled me, as the bootstrap paradox became the central point of the show, the “knot” the characters seek to maintain or unravel depending on the faction, and with the key to unraveling it being finding the “origin,” the prime mover to a swirling, massive set of events occurring in an endless loop.

Holy crap, it’s dense, it’s enormously atmospheric, it’s tragic, and it’s possibly the work of mad genius. THE DARK isn’t for everybody, but if you like intelligent sci-fi, check it out.

BETAAL

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Filmed in India, BETAAL is a zombie series with a terrific premise, heavy cliches presented so earnestly they kind of work, and plenty of ridiculous elements. The result is not quite serious, not quite camp, and I found it sort of overbaked but I just went with it and had some fun.

The show centers on an elite counter-insurgency military unit that has a reputation for brutality. While they are super patriotic and believe in the work they’re doing, their leader is corrupt, hiring out her unit to corporations to suppress resistance to development of natural resources. A businessman hires the unit to clear out the villagers living near a mountain so they can reopen a tunnel sealed since the Great Mutiny of 1857, which trapped a regiment of British East India Trading Company soldiers inside.

The villagers warn a great evil is trapped under the mountain that will come out, but of course they’re ignored, and the story quickly turns into one of survival horror as the soldiers and the businessman and his family try to last the night as the lost regiment emerges to claim the world.

The result was just fun enough to keep me watching despite the usual plot-pushing zombie cliches and odd elements like the British undead wearing military uniforms from the 1700s and not the Victorian era, complete with tri-horn hats, and an old abandoned British barracks that somehow got fluorescent lighting installed since 1857.

Check it out if you’re looking for something different in a familiar zombie package. (Streaming on Netflix)

MONSTRUM (2018)

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If you’re enjoying the South Korean zombie series KINGDOM, set in the 1500s, you’ll love MONSTRUM (2018), a film set in the same time period about a mysterious monster that is plaguing the kingdom. I had a lot of fun with this one.

The year is 1527 during King Jungjong’s reign, where plague is spreading in Joseon. The king wants to rule on behalf of the people, but the prime minister and his cabinet keeps thwarting him, creating a power struggle. The prime minister invents a monster to terrify the people and turn them against the king, but investigation reveals the monster is quite real. (Real historical reports of a monster in the kingdom inspired the film.)

Leading the investigation is Yun-kyum, the greatest warrior in the kingdom, aided by the clownish but capable Kim In-kwon, his equally capable adopted daughter Lee Hye-ri, and royal guardsman Choi Woo-shik. They’re all instantly likeable, and the film does a great job investing you in them winning.

The political machinations are handled similarly to KINGDOM, that is, very simply and without distracting from the action. The fight scenes with Yun-kyum and Kim In-kwon are incredible. Then the monster is finally revealed, and wow, it’s extremely cool, an unstoppable juggernaut of brutish rage. I hadn’t seen a monster done so well on film since THE RITUAL. The story winds up pretty much how you expect but in a very satisfying way. Recommended.

CONTAGION (2011)

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Directed by Steven Soderbergh and featuring a terrific ensemble cast including Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, and Bryan Cranston, CONTAGION was an unsettling watch in 2011. The COVID-19 pandemic has renewed interest in the film, which is a realistic depiction of a devastating pandemic, though thankfully COVID isn’t nearly as lethal and contagious as the virus depicted in the film.

I’d written a book several years before the film came out depicting a very similar scenario, though my virus was based on the Spanish Flu, which shows a remarkable similarity to the coronavirus in terms of transmission, hospitalization rate, and mortality rate. I did a huge amount of research on how a real pandemic would play out, which ruined a lot of biological apocalypse movies for me. CONTAGION got it exactly right. I thought it overplayed the role of exploitation of willful ignorance portrayed in the character played by Jude Law, but man, looking at COVID, did I call that wrong.

The result is a film that rolls out as a very realistic medical and apocalyptic thriller, made all the more chilling by how accurate it is in terms of what a novel organism can do to civilization in a short time, and how civilization fights back with the best of human ingenuity and spirit. The film covers a broad cross section of people responding to the pandemic, so we never really get to feel connected to any of them very much, but there are some powerfully emotional moments, such as when a CDC field agent realizes she’s sick, and when a man’s family abruptly dies and he struggles to protect the only family he has left, his teenage daughter. The film is also fairly procedural, but I like that kind of stuff–I’m weird in that I like films that realistically depict somebody doing an interesting job well.

Is this a film to watch during a pandemic? I kind of wish more people would, if only to aid understanding of how this kind of thing works and why public health officials approach it the way they do. But it’s not for everybody for sure. I loved it for how chilling it was–the monster is real, it’s in nature, and it can have devastating agency–and I especially enjoyed seeing the film again and how accurate it turned out to be. (Seen on Netflix)

ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (2019)

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Ten years after ZOMBIELAND, ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP hit the screens in 2019 with the same great cast of Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Emma Stone and the same director (Ruben Fleischer) and writers (Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick). The result doesn’t have the same punch as the original and largely trades on the same jokes, and besides that the story simply isn’t as strong, but it’s a crowd-pleasing sequel, banking on the characters’ charm and the original’s fundamentals.

In DOUBLE TAP, our gang of four have roamed Zombieland for years and end up at the White House, where they set up a home. This “family” is content but suffering some growing pains as Wichita chafes at commitment with Columbus, and Little Rock has grown up, wants to find people her own age, and chafes at Tallahassee’s protective fathering. The ladies take off, and the boys pursue, having adventures and meeting new people along the way, while discovering a new and powerful type of zombie.

It all feels kind of recycled, the climax comes out of nowhere, and the story is pretty weak (especially Little Rock, who is treated as a plot device for the rest instead of a real character), but the cast has so much heart, charm, and chemistry that they pull it off, with the result being a compelling, fun, purely escapist ride.