VHSdynamite

Horrible events happens in this film, but the film doesn't present them in a compelling way. It never gets frightening or suspenseful, only sickening, and the dialogue is drab chatter all the way. Too much talking and inquisition, no room for mystery here!

The characters are as expendable as can be, no personality or charm in any of them. Too bad, because William Jackson Harper and Will Poulter are good actors. But they all behave like normal people just going "wtf I'm going home" all the time, or with scientific curiosity. No enough fear response to make it interesting.

Swedes being cast as exotic pagans (for Americans) is just a silly trope. And of course the Americans demonize communal living. Any lifestyle other than the suburban nuclear family has to be a cult, right?

There's so much backstory and universe building being set up in this show, but all this and all the characters are just too bland and uninteresting for me to care. There's really not much happening either, except a crime gone wrong and lot of people asking each other questions and answering with "why do you ask?" It feels like watching bad impro with people blocking each other. And the actors are overacting to get something out of the empty dialogue.

The dialogue is too mundane, to detailed. ("We're gonna use NYPD vehicles. We can't wait for ours to be dispatched.") It's repetitous too, the same info is told to different characters. Writer Ed Solomon tries too hard to write casual and clever lines, but they feel contrived and often too self-conscious.

The star of the show is the postal inspector. She's diagnosed borderline to explain her annoying acting style, which is too-cool-for-school and inappropriately casual. Nothing frightens her the whole time, and she's never in doubt, she's a hollow character even with the borderline label. None of the other characters are memorable either.

Solomon is a comedy writer, which explains the weird tone in this show. There are too many jokes for it to be an engaging drama, but not enough humor to be a comedy, nor enough suspense or mystery to be a thriller. Instead it's this half-serious, non-engaging story.