S.and you have opened Netflix you may have recently noticed that at number 7 of the top ten an unreleased title has sprung up and little known: Archive 81.
This series, directed by the showrunner of The Boys and of the Vampire Diaries Rebecca Sonnenshineis taken from an American podcast, a market in which the title reached the top ten placing itself directly in the first place (that is until the last season of Ozark) and haunting the US public.
Archive 81the plot
In this series they mix, as well as multiple time planesas in Darkalso multiple universes or dimensionsas in Stranger Things. Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie) is a museum archivist and specializes in recovering and restoring old VHSa skill that apparently is the only reason why he is contacted by the entrepreneur Virgil Davenport (Martin Donovan) to restore the cassettes of an amateur documentary of a student. Remained damaged in 1994 during a fire.
And here is the first coincidence: in the same year, again due to a fire, Dan lost his whole family.
Dina Shihabi is Melody Pandras. (Netflix)
The other protagonist, Melody Pandras (Dina Shihabi) is the student who is making the report. Object: the Visser condominium, ancient New York building with an esoteric charm (the engravings on the entrance door taken by Melody in the first episode are very eloquent) whose condominiums they all seem to be hiding secrets. Even Jess, a little girl who makes some money running errands for tenants. Which he presents, for a fee, to Melody.
The lessons of the greats of cinema
Dan is invited by Davenport to do the whole job in an isolated house in the woods, where his mental strength, and ours with him, is put to the test. But the protagonist is very determined in carrying out the work, also because we soon discover that, both Melody and the Visser facts are somehow connected to Dan’s familyAnd therefore probably also to its tragic end.
From the footage of 28 years earlier we learn that a sect operates in Visser, and that Melody, pushed to Visser by an unresolved family issue, he probably discovered something too much. The influence of Stanley Kubrick from Eyes Wide Shutfrom The Blair Witch Project, Videodromeand many films in which architecture (The tenant on the third floor by Roman Polanski) is the place and prison of evil, it is evident; however, no reference takes away pleasure and fear.
Mamoudou Athie is Dan Turner. (Netflix)
“Help me pleaseMelody says directly to the camera and, ideally, to Dan who is watching her in her work 28 years later. But, as from the best lesson of David Lynchtaken from the mother of the noir series, Twin Peaks, nothing is as it seems.
There suggestion is in fact the distorting lens through which we observe the actions of Dan and Melodywhere the mental health doubt: is what we see real or is it a delirium of the protagonists? The cinematic lesson of Christopher Nolan.
Why do you like it?
Built like a horror, Archive 81 has the rhythm of a thriller and winks at pop culture and a decade, the nineties, which still makes our hearts beat. The mix of pop culture, film and television references and the density of twists from the very first episodes, has meant that this show, where there are no big planetary stars, rocketed to the top of Netflix’s charts within days of release. Occurred on January 14th.
We still don’t know if there will be a second seasonthe ending is plausible but does not explain everything, so there is some margin. And given the success of this first season, a sequel seems desirable.
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