REVIEW. ‘Archive 81’: “A sizzling homage to the horror genre” | Viewing guide

There is no better psychological preparation for the hyped VTM game show ‘De Verraders’ than a portion of mental games and a jumble of cassette tapes, all of which disguise a piece of a mysterious, disturbing puzzle. In ‘Archive 81’, an archivist must restore a series of damaged cassettes that had been destroyed in a fire in a New York apartment building twenty-five years ago. If main character Dan manages to patch things up, he’ll be awarded a $100,000 reward. The fact that the principal is shrouded in mystery and Dan has to perform this job on his own in a villa in the middle of a forest isn’t scary. Not scary at all…!

As soon as Dan begins restoring the tapes, we not only look over his shoulder at their contents, we are also catapulted straight into the footage dating back to the mid-’90s. In it we see that the creator of the tapes is a woman, Melody, who films the apartment building for a history project and interviews its (to put it mildly) weird residents. It doesn’t take long for Dan to discover something odd about the tapes and where he works. And Melody also has other motives than she makes out.

If this series has one purpose, it’s to tighten the tension bolts slowly but efficiently to keep you on the edge of your armchair for eight episodes. The horror is not of the gory kind, but it is psychological. Each episode adds new elements of intrigue, suspense and mystery that keep the story evolving and leave you piling up the question marks. Is there a curse on these tapes? Is this a glitch in the Matrix? Are we in a psychological experiment? Not only does each episode end with a bang of a cliffhanger, the series also contains a catalog of horror winks. The fact that Dan is working on these tapes, cut off from the outside world, stirs up a touch of ‘The Shining’. The videotapes in themselves are reminiscent of ‘The Ring’ and ‘The Blair Witch Project’. Sprinkle on a little bit of ‘Poltergeist’ and ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and you have a more than intoxicating TV cocktail to slurp out loud.

Because this series is so imbued with a certain old-school analog atmosphere, the series is at its best when it doesn’t go too forced to go digital. Some tricks are borderline anticlimactic. Fortunately, these do not occur too often and are therefore easy to sweep under the rug.

‘Archive 81’ is available in its entirety on Netflix.

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