This is what worried me. Three episodes have passed and it’s clear that, barring a major twist at the end, which is likely to enrage the audience (gas leak, chemicals in the water), Navarro is schizophrenic like her mother and sister (in fact, I think this is semi-likely ), that True Detective: Night Country It’s also the Ghost Country. It is a land of magic and mystery, where the dead speak, the maimed know your name, someone in the dark plays ball with you and a sinister Ella has been awakened. It’s also a place where basically none of this is scary.
Plot-wise, this episode moves the ball forward in several key ways. It makes us wonder why, if they were so happy together, murder victim Annie K. and alleged murderer Raymond Clark kept their relationship a secret. It lets us know that Hank withheld at least one important piece of information about the case, a friend of Anna’s that he called to report the relationship. He introduces us to Oliver Tagaq (Lance Karmer), former Tsalal researcher turned dangerous armed hermit. He shows that Navarro first met Annie when she showed up at her birthing center to arrest her and instead she ended up helping deliver her first baby. He reveals that for years, both Liz and Evangeline have been passing off a suspect’s death at their hands as a domestic violence murder-suicide, although we still don’t know all the details. He tells us that the scientists died before being frozen in the snow, probably from fear. And he shows us Annie K.’s last moments before someone or something on the ice rips her screaming from the camera.
Meanwhile, in the subplot, Evangeline’s sister Julia (also known as Niviâna) continues to struggle with her worsening schizophrenia. Qavvik, hoping to get closer to Evangeline, discovers her horrible upbringing. Leah attends an anti-landmine protest and is forced to erase her facial markings by Danvers, who I think sees murder victim Annie K.’s face every time she looks at her own stepdaughter with those traditional lines on her chin, but who It’s also being defiantly racist about it. A local woman gives birth to a stillborn baby and Liz attends the funeral at her home, greatly shocked not only by the tenderness and sadness, but also by the similarity to her own situation and, finally, by the disgusting black water. that flows from the sink. when she tries to wash her hands, an unmissable metaphor.
Unfortunately, it mostly goes in a supernatural horror direction, and I think that’s a big mistake given the skill set on display here. Now I’m not going to sit here and argue that individual moments are creepy or gross or capable of scaring you. If you got chills when Lund (Þorsteinn Bachmann) sat down as the Undertaker and started talking to Evangeline as the Mouth of Sauron, I can’t blame you.
But the atmosphere is very bad. It is a police procedural, a crime story, a murder in a working-class town, a death that represents the death of a way of life. That requires a gritty, wandering tone and a focus on fact-finding, at odds with the kind of relentless buildup of tension and dread that a season-long horror story on television requires.
I could overcome some of this if I thought filmmaking in general was above the level of safe competence. Clumsy and vulgar musical choices repeatedly take me out of the action, with montages set to sub-Tom Waits gumbo or whispering women who sound like they’ve kissed a rose on a grave. Meanwhile, the use of color, often interesting when showcasing vast Arctic vistas bathed in various bright greens, reds and blues, too often falls back into professionalism. teal and peach palette I hoped that cinema would have disappeared in the Obama administration.
However, there is always acting to fall back on, and that is still formidable. Jodie Foster is the kind of kindness you barely notice, the kind that makes you think, “Oh, I guess that’s just who she is.” She is adept at either doing everything she can for good reason or bad reasons, being a terrible and openly racist mother to her stepdaughter, and being a thoughtful and patient mother figure to both Deputy Pete and any young children who meet her. walk over. shape. These don’t seem like traits thrown together at random in Foster’s hands; they feel like contradictory but emotionally logical actions of a complicated and inconsistent person. The fact that she lost her son in a drunk driving accident doesn’t help. The fact that she and Navarro seem to have provided information about the murder of at least one suspect in the past (an abusive drunk who murdered her much younger teenage girlfriend) probably doesn’t help either, although it does explain her fight.
Speaking of Navarro, new actor Kali Reis once again spends an hour riding shotgun with Jodie Foster and looks no more out of place on screen with her than Anthony Hopkins or Harvey Keitel. The same can be said for Finn Bennett as Pete Prior, at least in some ways; His material is less demanding and intense than Reis’s, but it comes with the added challenge of needing his character to try to impress Danvers, not just spar with her. Come on, you met Liz Danvers. Of the two characters, who do you think has a harder time getting the reaction he wants from her?
So that’s where we meet halfway. Great local color, not so good coloration. Sharp acting, dull horror. A story with an appropriately bloody heart, told for the first time in the series’ history in a way that feels like something you might get from another show, up to and including Season 1 of this show.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about television forRolling Stone,Vulture,The New York TimesandAnywhere that has it, In fact. He and his family live on Long Island.
