Archivo 81

I was surprised how good this was. The story is pretty original and the acting is great. There are some nice scares but it's much more of a slow brooding build up. Without spoilers this body of work kind of reminds me of a more scary stranger things.

I really liked the grainy 80s aesthetic and oppressive, isolated atmosphere. The show starts out very strong with a slow mystery revealing itself reminding me a lot of Lost (2004), the framing of the story, largely through replaying of VHS tapes is clever and disorienting leaving you questioning the reality you're seeing. The 2 leads and very good as is the best friend character and there is a strong emotional undercurrent as well as paranormal and horror elements. However, as I often find with shows like this, it is exceptionally difficult to deliver on the mystery. As the show builds to conclusion I felt some level of repetitiveness as well disappointment as more is revealed and the subtlety is gradually replaced with propulsive action and characters become more archetypal. That said, overall I still really enjoyed it and love that stuff like this is being made with a good budget behind it.

Archive 81 is a fine series that limits itself in many ways.

It never goes full mystery and never tries to bend your mind and leave you confused for a couple of episodes.

What it does most of the time is it builds up to something, leaves it right away, builds up 5 new things and 2-3 episodes later tries to pick up on these but gives up. Some episodes are also tonally very different, which shows in random motivation and attitude changes, like when our main lead suddenly goes Oceans 11.

Surprisingly enough, the most mysterious episodes were done by Benson&Moorhead duo, although I dislike their other films.

If you strip the series of all the basic "cult" shenanigans (overused by Kill List, Hereditary, The Empty Man), the story becomes so simplistic they sum it up in a few sentences in the last episode.

The series has a nice feel to it, the atmosphere is great, although sometimes it's grainy, sometimes not, and color correction changes, there's probably a reason for that.

Acting-wise only the supporting cast performances can be enjoyed (although sometimes completely misdirected), the main archivist lead is wooden and a complete bore, lost girl Melody is memorable, but not due to the acting, she's unique in some way, but I can not say for sure why. Sadly we didn't get enough supporting characters on screen. Even though some of them were barely believable, like the Davenport brother, who is so useless you can't buy him for a powerful company CEO.

The 90ties setting was ok, they didn't go full nostalgia, but kept some of the pop culture references.

If the ending wasn't such a cliched failure, I'd give Archive 81 an 8-9. It is still a good watch, just drags a lot, wasting too much time on boring leads. Additional creativity would've greatly improved this. Like seriously, if the most intriguing part in your series is the otherworld and the demon-god, at least try to make these look good.

I'm not sure why this got such low ratings. I didn't find it slow at all. In fact, it reeled me in pretty quickly and I was hooked after the first episode. It's not your average slasher type of horror, it's more psychologically thrilling than cheap jump scares.

I also don't understand why people complained about not being able to understand the lead actor's voice. I can understand him just fine, he just has a deep monotone voice like Adam Driver.

Don't let the reviews turn you off, give it a chance!

Because episode 4 changes everything.

Sometimes people need to have patience to see where it goes and don't give up after one episode... Yes! The first 3 episodes are a bit slow which doesnt't mean they are boring and the acting is not bad, but episode 4 gets things in motion in a good way, at least for me.

For now it's a 8.