duncan_scott-18510

I don't understand why this has gotten such good publicity. The start is really well done and draws you in, nice and creepy. It starts with so much promise. But the entire family consists of idiots. You will spend most of the time shouting at how people can be so completely disfunctional and unable to test hypotheses. The flashbacks are quite intriguing but the main characters are worthless cliches. Husband who doesn't believe, paranoid wife with previous mental issues, clever teen who never questions or investigates the thing he was so eager to turn on, annoying kid that's easily manipulated. This is a 5 at best, but loses more points for dragging this out into 6 episodes to waste your time, when it could just be a short clever Black Mirror episode. There are many better movies than this, don't waste your time.

Season 1 was fantastic and I had great expectations for season 2. Season 2 starts with the same kind of mysteries as the first but then turns into a really convoluted political plot. The characters motivations go all over the place, the plot swings backwards and forwards and the end is unsatisfying. The acting is still good but the whole thing just feels like a mixed bag that doesn't really come together as a whole. Many parts feel like the script writers just needed X to happen so made the characters do Y and it all just feels a bit unnatural rather than organic.

Then you have just plain dumb things like a terrorist disguised as a sick person with a mask to cover her face, who continually keeps taking it off in public. Plus a cop that suddenly decides the Fae are ok with barely a character arc.

Taking both together the series comes off as average because the final season is such a let down. If you're tempted, just watch season 1 and ignore season 2, you're not missing much.

The wikipedia article is a much drier read but at least it doesn't have a tonne of conspiracy theories thrown everywhere. It becomes pretty clear early on that the series wants to spend its time on conspiracy nonsense rather than presenting the facts. Way too much time is spent on throwing ideas around and making things seems suspicious when really they're not. Really poor documentary that doesn't present the facts very well. The sad thing is they could have easily made it as long with all the facts but they chose to make it more sensational. People with obvious agendas (e.g. Book sales, etc.) are not called out fully until the very end and it just makes you feel like you wasted a lot of time. Do yourself a favour and just read the wikipedia article, it's much better. It's still a mystery but that doesn't mean the explanation has to be from a movie script.