Definitely the best episode so far of this series.
I mainly want to talk about the segment "Layers of Fear", that's why I'm writing this review but I'll talk briefly about the other segment as well.
"Macabre" is a good description of this series especially in contrast to adjectives like "scary". That's not really a criticism; this show tries to do a particular thing tonally but this episode stood out to me when I saw it being that one episode you might want to see even if you couldn't get into the rest of it.
Yes, there is strange imagery and uncanny circumstances which I do not want to spoil but I deeply admire how they do not simply use this as a sort of pornography of the praeternatural, more like an article in a tabloid than an actual narrative.
Rather, they use the thing in question to explore a theme. Yes, I know: any literature teacher who actually uses the word "theme" needs to up their game but the material oddity allows us to examine a one of the real fragilities that people have. The way we cling onto the past or possess the people we claim to love.
You might say this more traditional narrative is lazy compared to the 3-act-averse episodes so far but the way I see it, avoiding a 3 act structure is an experiment that was made and failed and so it is no longer experimental or creative to avoid it; just a lack of following through.
Maybe I will find something some day that makes me eat my words, maybe you have read/viewed that exact thing so I wish no disrespect.
The other segment feels somewhat superfluous after the first one but in its own right it is actually a good example of snapshot-of-strange style of story telling I mentioned earlier.
"Layers of Fear" may be indeed a really dumb title, just call it "layers". But it hits a nerve as perhaps the most disturbing thing on Netflix.
I mainly want to talk about the segment "Layers of Fear", that's why I'm writing this review but I'll talk briefly about the other segment as well.
"Macabre" is a good description of this series especially in contrast to adjectives like "scary". That's not really a criticism; this show tries to do a particular thing tonally but this episode stood out to me when I saw it being that one episode you might want to see even if you couldn't get into the rest of it.
Yes, there is strange imagery and uncanny circumstances which I do not want to spoil but I deeply admire how they do not simply use this as a sort of pornography of the praeternatural, more like an article in a tabloid than an actual narrative.
Rather, they use the thing in question to explore a theme. Yes, I know: any literature teacher who actually uses the word "theme" needs to up their game but the material oddity allows us to examine a one of the real fragilities that people have. The way we cling onto the past or possess the people we claim to love.
You might say this more traditional narrative is lazy compared to the 3-act-averse episodes so far but the way I see it, avoiding a 3 act structure is an experiment that was made and failed and so it is no longer experimental or creative to avoid it; just a lack of following through.
Maybe I will find something some day that makes me eat my words, maybe you have read/viewed that exact thing so I wish no disrespect.
The other segment feels somewhat superfluous after the first one but in its own right it is actually a good example of snapshot-of-strange style of story telling I mentioned earlier.
"Layers of Fear" may be indeed a really dumb title, just call it "layers". But it hits a nerve as perhaps the most disturbing thing on Netflix.
