Archive 81

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.

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.

Daniel Turner works as a restorer of damaged film and video tape. One day he is approached by Virgil Davenport who wants him to undertake a project for him. It will involve working in a remote house in the Catskill Mountains; here he is to restore a set of fire damaged Hi-8 video tapes. They were shot in 1994 by PhD student Melody Pendras. She was working on a project concerning the inhabitants of the Visser Building. She is now missing but it is assumed that she died in a fire that destroyed the building. As Dan works through the tapes he learns more about Melody, the Visser Building, its inhabitants and a strange cult active their... he starts to feel a connection to Melody and even feels that somehow he may be able to save her!

I rather enjoyed this series. In the early episodes I was intrigued to see which way it would go; especially after Melody discovered the cult... would the cultists be misguided or would they be tapping into something supernatural; and if so what. The way the series switched between Dan's work in the present and Melody's in 1994 was effective; it would have got irritating if we'd only seen her footage of her research. There are some impressively creepy moments and a few shocking scenes; nothing too disturbing though. The cast is solid; especially Mamoudou Athie; who is frequently in scenes by himself as Dan and Dina Shihabi who impresses as the increasingly perturbed Melody. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody who likes a good chiller. I hope we get a second season.

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 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.