Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

SEVERANCE

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In SEVERANCE (Apple TV), the stars align with near perfection in regards to story, pacing, casting, direction, and world building to offer a stylish, heartfelt sci-fi-ish story about work and corporate America. This was a real treat that struck me soft and hard on multiple levels. I loved it.

Mark works for Lumon Industries, a mysterious, old family-owned corporation that has a floor where the workers agreed to undergo “severance,” a procedure that separates their memories and identities at work and at home. Struck by grief after losing his wife, Mark agreed to the procedure so he could stop thinking about her for part of the day. As a result, there are two Marks with no knowledge of the other, one at work, the other at home. Mark’s work-life balance is upended when his supervisor disappears and he must take over as department chief, training a new employee (Helly) who doesn’t want to be there, and at home, he begins to suspect that Lumon is not the good place he thought it was.

When I first heard of it, I thought it might end up being another OFFICE SPACE, satire that made me laugh but stuck to one lane. Not so with SEVERANCE, which rolls out like a Ted Chiang short story, exploring a subject by peeling away every possible layer to find its beating heart. Directed with a perfectionist energy by Ben Stiller, the result is funny, serious, thoughtful, and engaging. A thinky work of art that doesn’t feel thinky, an engaging story that dodges contrivance, and funny, without taking a single easy shot, to the point where the comedy is almost subliminal.

The world building is terrific, with plenty of lore, weirdness, and mystery as a hook. The sci-fi premise feels natural and lived in–similar to ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND–and the corporation is sterile and stylish and incredibly weird while also feeling familiar. The casting is perfect, with terrific stalwarts like Christopher Walken, John Turturro, and Patricia Arquette rounding out the stellar cast and characters where each feels highly distinctive and interesting. Adam Scott, in particular, brings a lot of depth to his everyman Mark, and Britt Lower brings an excellent quiet desperation to her portrayal of Helly. Thematically, the show is an onion peeled in layers but subtly, showing corporate America as a place where you’re not your real self, driven by the petty, obsessed with control, a world that in varying ways is a sterile prison, dictatorship, religion, even a cult. It’s capitalism with a human face, a happy face that on closer inspection is pretty damn ugly. It’s our choice whether we want to wear the same happy face or insist on our humanity.

Highly recommended.

THE ENFIELD HAUNTING

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Originally airing on Sky in 2015 and now available for streaming, THE ENFIELD HAUNTING is a three-part miniseries describing a notorious haunting that allegedly took place at a council home in the Enfield district of London in the years 1977-1979. (The case is also featured in THE CONJURING 2.) The series offers solid acting and an engaging story until, well, it kinda goes off the rails.

It’s 1977, and single mom Peggy Hodgson is raising four children in her council home. When her daughters Janet (11) and Margaret (14) discovered odd noises in their room, Peggy investigates only to see furniture move on its own. The DAILY MIRROR runs a story, which draws the attention of the Society of Psychical Research, which in turn sends novice paranormal investigator Maurice Grosse to either prove or debunk. Grosse has his own interest in the afterlife, as he and his wife lost their daughter the year before. When Grosse becomes convinced the haunting was genuine, the Society sends Guy Playfair, another investigator, to the house. The series, in fact, is based on his book, THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED.

I loved the Seventies setting and quick pacing, with the spirit steadily revealing itself and inviting more attention from the press, Society, and authorities. The actors are great–notably David Matthew Macfadyen and Timothy Spall of Harry Potter fame, with their dynamic driving the story for me. The third episode, however, jumps the shark as things get even worse and then wrap up tidily in an emotional if incredulous finish.

The real-life haunting the series is based on has been judged a hoax by experts, while to this day Janet Hodgson maintains it was all true, making it a matter of individual belief. Regardless of where you stand, THE ENFIELD HAUNTING is surprisingly fun, at least until the “real life” events start to imitate a sappy movie. Check it out for a neat little ghost story.

THE LAST KINGDOM, Season 5

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THE LAST KINGDOM, one of my favorite Netflix series, recently came to a conclusion with its fifth season, which brought it up to book 10 of Bernard Cornwell’s 13-tome series. While I enjoyed the season and it wrapped everything up, it was the weakest season for me.

In this season, Brida exacts her revenge on the Saxons and specifically Uhtred, toppling the Northumbrian kingdom in the process. Uhtred must ride to his daughter’s defense, while King Edward makes moves to realize his father’s vision of a united England. Edward’s father in law, Aethelhelm, continues his conniving to ensure his grandson gains the throne, which culminates in a final battle that includes Bebbanburg as the prize.

As always, Alexander Dreymon brings the beloved character of Uhtred to life. The season starts off really strong, with some terrific establishing scenes in Iceland and with Uhtred raising Athelstan. The later battle scenes are bloodily well done, and all the major plot lines are resolved more or less satisfactorily. The season felt weak for me, however. I had the same feeling watching the last season of THE EXPANSE, my favorite sci-fi show, and definitely while watching the last season of GAME OF THRONES. It’s like once a show is canceled and must be brought to a finish, the creators phone in the expected, lay on what they think is fan service, and offer up something that feels watered down, shortcutted, and plodding to the next scene or plot point. From Uhtred failing in most of what he tries to do to his daughter oddly rejecting him to Athelhelm acting like a comic book villain to characters teleporting to Brida somehow deserving redemption despite her utter cruelty, and more, the whole thing felt off and seeking the exit.

I still liked it, just the way I did the last season of THE EXPANSE. The writers didn’t betray their own show the way GAME OF THRONES’ creators notoriously did. I just didn’t love it, and by the the time the spell broke for me early in the season, I was simply watching to finish.

Fans of the Cornwell series will notice that there are still three books left that haven’t been adapted. Good news! In late 2021, Netflix announced a two-hour movie, SEVEN KINGS JUST DIE, will be released in late 2022 or early to mid 2023. This film will serve as an epilogue for the show. I’m looking forward to it.

BLACK CRAB (2022)

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Based on the novel by Jerker Virdborg, Swedish film BLACK CRAB offers a dark apocalyptic vision I really wanted to like but found fairly flawed. Carried by stimulating set pieces and solidly empathetic acting by Noomi Rapace (LAMB), it’s engaging but in the end left me feeling pretty empty.

It’s the near future, and Sweden is devouring itself in a conflict that appears to be a civil war. Caroline Edh (Rapace), a soldier in this war-torn, apocalyptic wasteland, seemingly exists to fight, inflicting vengeance on the enemy who took her teenage daughter from her early in the conflict when Edh was just a civilian trying to flee the city. She’s called before a commander who tells her they’re losing the war, and she and a small team must travel behind enemy lines to deliver a canister to a research facility on an island. This canister, she’s told, could end the war. As the sea here is frozen over, they will travel across the archipelago on ice skates. It looks like a suicide mission, but Edh accepts, as she’s told her daughter is alive and well on the island.

There’s a lot going for BLACK CRAB. First off, it’s unrelentingly grim, providing a very dark backdrop against which Edh’s tiny bit of hope to reunite with her daughter burns brightly. This is an apocalyptic world, no goofing around or comic relief to break the tension, nothing happy about it all, in fact. The world building is exceptional, with the journey punctuated by sharp, economical, and realistic action scenes and provocative set pieces. As with the striking Swedish invasion movie UNTHINKABLE, the conflict and the enemy are left vague, and it’s unclear who the good guys are. The canister starts off as a MacGuffin but when it’s revealed what it is, it changes the game. The plot is simple: get from point A to B to end a horrific war. The theme of, in a war like this, the only side worth fighting for is humanity’s, is powerful.

On the downside, for me as a viewer, there are some flaws. The vagueness of the conflict worked as a mystery in UNTHINKABLE but feels generic in BLACK CRAB, making the whole thing seem kind of meaningless. Some of the major plot points feel very derivative. The protagonist chooses to side with humanity seemingly out of vengeance rather than as a purely moral decision. This compromises the protagonist’s decision that changes everything in the last act and only adds to the bleakness rather than rising above and sharply contrasting against it.

Then there’s the timing. The film came out while people watched very real horrors unfolding in Ukraine, so I’m not sure the release’s timing helped or hindered it.

Overall, BLACK CRAB was watchable for me, particularly for its remarkable world building, set pieces, and Noomi Rapace bringing much-needed humanity to her character, but the overall bleak and empty story and lack of a true moral decision kept it from being great for me.

CRACOW MONSTERS

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In the Polish series CRACOW MONSTERS, a medical student joins a group of supernaturally gifted students working with a mysterious professor to investigate demonology. A work of dark urban fantasy with strong roots in Polish mythology, the series follows genre conventions while serving up something that feels unconventional, gritty, and lived in. I liked this one a lot, it’s a lot of fun.

In the first episode, we meet Alex, starting her first year at medical school in the city of Cracow. The sole survivor of several tragedies, haunted by the death of her mother and horrific night terrors, she worries she will go insane like her mother and distracts herself with partying and sex. (Ah, to be young again, when you can party hard all night and then go to class the next morning with a giant cup of coffee feeling a little worse for wear but ready to go.) When she’s invited by a brilliant professor to an internship with his group of gifted students, she enters a world where Polish mythology is real. And she learns she is at the center of it.

There’s a lot to like here. Cracow is wonderfully gritty, its locations offering a distinctly European mix of hip and modern with old and even ancient. The characters are basically angsty hipsters, but they’re believable, and they’re interesting as a team. The monsters are terrific–a pair of twins who are succubi, a monstrous version of Krampus/Santa Claus, and so on–all controlled by a malevolent spirit who may not be a demon but instead a god. The plot rolls out as a simple dark urban fantasy but with just enough complexity that it comes together. The Polish lore is great.

All’s not perfect, as it rarely is. The pacing may be a little slow for some, at least in the early episodes (I personally didn’t mind the slow build). Alex is difficult nearly to the point of being unlikable, though that’s a common reaction for me watching something with a strong dash of YA in it. Her battles with various monsters roll out without much tension, they seem to resolve easily and in a scripted manner. And as is common with TV shows where the writers want to keep a sense of mystery going, characters argue, avoid talking, or “cease to exist” due to a cutaway when a simple conversation would fix things. Also common, the arch villain talks about how he’s going to kill the protagonist instead of easily doing it. A number of smaller plot questions were punted to Season 2.

But no matter. Though the Neil Gaiman style of urban fantasy isn’t my usual thing, I liked this one a lot, and there’s plenty on the table for a second season if it earns it. Recommended if you’re looking for fresh, offbeat, and highly immersive dark fantasy.

QUO VADIS, AIDA?

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In QUO VADIS, AIDA?, a 2020 Bosnian film written, produced, and directed by Jasmila Žbanic, we see the horrific Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War through the eyes of a woman struggling to protect her family from what she believes will be certain death. This powerful, realistic, and heartbreaking film is still haunting me.

During the Bosnian War in the Nineties, Serbian military and paramilitary forces (led by Ratko Mladic, who was later convicted for war crimes) lay siege to the city of Srebrenica, declared a United Nations safe zone. We see Aida, a schoolteacher, working as a translator between the city leaders and the Dutch officers serving with the UN, who promise to use force to protect the citizens. In the next scene, we see the population fleeing to crowd the local UN base as the Serbs enter the city. But the Serbs aren’t done. The film shows us what happens over the next 24 hours.

Translating from Latin as “Where are you going, Aida?”, QUO VADIS, AIDA? presents a portrait of a woman with some agency (she works as a translator for the UN and therefore has their protection) who struggles to help her city or family. Over the next 24 hours, we see the UN come up as absolutely useless as the Dutch soldiers understand they are not allowed to back up their threats, resulting in their utter humiliation. (It’s easy to say the UN is “useless” in conflicts like the Bosnian War and the war against Ukraine, but it’s an instrument, not a government, and only as useless as its member countries want it do be.) We see the Serbs bully and murder the Bosnians and ultimately convince them to go willingly to their doom. And we see Aida go from trying to protect her city to desperately trying to protect her family as things quickly devolve to every person for themselves.

The film making style is almost perfect. No heart wrenching music, the matter of fact presentation without an ounce of bias. The story is presented almost in a documentary manner, respecting the viewer to supply the requisite emotions. Aida is not a hero but instead a wife and mother desperately trying to keep her men alive. The story becomes steadily more painful to experience, as you can see what’s coming but like Aida know there’s no way to prevent it, right to the end, when the survivors on both sides must not only live together again but also with what happened to them and what they’ve done.

I find stories about the Bosnian War particularly relevant because for anytime I hear somebody in America threatening civil war, this is exactly what they’re promising. Even now, its lessons aren’t even learned in Bosnia–the film could not be shot in Srebrenica itself because the current mayor is a genocide-denier.