Archives for TV

All Relationships are Precious: A First Encounter with K-Drama and “My Mister”

My Mister opens in a typical office setting, bright and bleak as a winter afternoon, everyone absorbed and professionally distant in their open-office “teams.” The only signs of anything green and growing here–passing shots, no more; the merest hint of new life springing up–are the office plants, watered by someone who is mostly invisible to the viewer. Shortly after, a comical sequence ensues as some of the office staff are sent into a panic by a flying bug—turns out, it is only a ladybug—as if something as vulnerable and colorful and living as that little ladybug has no place in
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Archive81 and Cosmic Horror

Archive81 proved a surprise Netflix hit, a slowburn horror series that wears a number of influences on its sleeve: Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, The Ring, The Twilight Zone, Alex Garland, David Lynch and Mike Flanagan. Never less than engaging (thanks primarily to superb lead performances and polished production values) the cumulative effect over eight episodes is like playing a game of genre Bingo: witches, haunted houses, cult rituals, cursed recordings, spooky corridors, snuff films, evil tomes, seances and sacrifices, possibly mad and unreliable narrators, and ancient evil deities. The last ingredient, readers may recognize, marks the series’ most conspicuous influence:
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