Saw this is passing on Prime so decided to watch it. I've binge watched the first season and only started the first episode of season 2 but will likely finish it and season 3. Considering I have a dozen other series to binge watch, the fact this caught my attention enough to steal me from other shows is why I give it good marks even with a silly plot.
OVERALL. Overall Mood worked well for me. The main protagonists wake up not knowing each other or how they got there. All the stereotypes are there from the fat kid to the nerd to the appearance obsessed rich girl (although she's not rich).
Being a Russian series then I did not recognize any of the actors and the exterior scenes were all new to me. One of the reason I like watching European series is that everything from road signs to buildings to parks all clearly have a different feel from North American counterparts.
The feel of the movie especially the infected females with their jerking walk, screams, odd running and pack mentality had a strong, if not logical , scare impact.
PACING. The pacing varied with some episodes flowing nicely while others were slow. A few had edit issues in which there was a jump in continuity that while sequential, was not explained. The best example is when the group is locked the second time in the bunker and two of the main characters come back to open the door. One point the two are in the city, the next they are back in the shelter. Another is when a character stops another from doing a motorcycle jump and the next, they show up at a important carjacking. The paramilitary find the hidden lab with the poorest explanation. This is likely just poor writing than pacing. They let go but they didn't originally know who they were capturing and he escapes minutes later. Ok to believe that one guard carries a tracking device on him and thinks to put it on the jacker. Not OK to believe that one guard carries two tracking devices, one to hide on the jacket and another to put obvious so it is found.
SCRIPT. Can't comment on the script as it is in Russian but like others said, the subtitles are very poor. There are time when you just have to conjecture what was said but fortunately those tended to be in scenes where the dialogue would have been routine and expected.
ACTING. Some have praised the acting but overall I thought it was only average at best. No one actor stood out as very good or bad so that was okay. One character, a practical joker always filming things, was not very good but that could be the writing and the directing.
PLOT PROBLEMS. Like a number of dystopian type tv shows and movies, there are some common errors here.
*No attempt to understand why they were picked as a random group. Yet we see several links. **Mitya and Irina are at the same rave. We know why Irina was picked up but why Mitya? Wrong place, wrong time? **We know why Marina was picked up. **We can assume that Natasha, who is commenting about sleeping with rich men, likely slept with the wrong rich man. **Skat was hacking into the drug companies systems. So if 5 of the 11 have links to Acme somehow, you'd think the other 6 might as well. A subplot not followed and could have provided an interesting episode putting it all together,
*Timeline. The timeline on the first season is not clear but as we continue to see people dead from that first day of the infection then it is not especially long. Yet we see people almost giving up during this short period. At the start of the second season, which must be months later as Valera has grown his hair out but we are seeing separate groups that almost look cultish. I'm afraid the second season might go down that road that we've seen in movies with a timeline over years with cult development but here it is just too short.
*Geography. Much of the above also relates to the fact that this is just an outbreak in Moscow - not even all of Russia. While people realize they are being contained, escape continues to be an option so knowing there is a whole normal world out there takes away some of the dystopian elements.
It could be argued why doesn't the government or official military take over the control of Moscow but this is fiction and the ACME company seems to have been given that power.
*Escaping. We see and hear of people getting shot while escaping. Yet we don't see any attempts to take out the electric fence, just a plot to jump it. There is a reference to shooting at the fence but no references about trying to drive a truck into a pylon or using something like a truck to ground out the fence or use of explosives.
*Female Zombies. I think it is unfair to call them zombies but people are. They do attack and in groups but just bite the neck and move on. As soon as you are dead - they move on. The biggest issue is that while the female zombies are scary in one way - they are not scary nor should they be overall. They are slow unless they are chasing you. They approach you slowly. They walk around slowly in the open in the daytime. They run but not especially fast. They don't appear to be any stronger than they were alive. They die with one gun shot. So any group of people with swords or clubs, let alone weapons, could hold their own against a group of them. And bizarre how frequently people pass over dead police or military without taking their weapons. The zombie scream is decapacitating and on that point, even after Max tells people you have to block your ears to avoid that, no one does. No one wears helmets like the woman on the motorcycle. Not even ACME's paramilitary don't have hearing protection.
*Dumb Activities. Like the worst of horror movies, the main characters do things that don't make sense. **They never change clothes especially those with inappropriate shoes. **When getting supplies, some load up carts with potato chips v.s. Canned products. (Also ignoring there is a long walk back to the car.) **Shouting or talking loudly at times when they shouldn't. Paramilitary often in pairs even when they could come against large numbers of zombies or armed human resistance. **The aforementioned lack of picking up weapons or for that matter - anyone carrying a weapon. The main group has one of those magical pistols with unlimited ammunition, usually carried by Max, and Valera carried a pipe. Otherwise none of the rest carry weapons. **The city has some futuristic electric fencing keeping people in or out in places but in other locations, it as roadblock with sandbags and a handful of soldiers. Even the armed human group we saw "anteaters" would be armed well enough to overpower one of those outposts and escape.
*Finale of season one doesn't make sense. First Glotov would not have let them go. It would just start killing them one after the other and cutting off limbs of
Irina until the father gave him. And if he did let them go then since he overheared the father say to his daughter to radio to say they are safe, the border patrol destroys the van and radios back they are on the other side. So the professor wants to hear his daughter's voice as he said earlier but that can't happen so if you were going to lie then that defeats the whole purpose of letting them go. And if they weren't going to let them cross the border then just drive them to an empty field and kill them. But in the end Glotov is given the vaccine, which we all know is not the vaccine, and it is instead a concentrated version of the virus which kills him within 1-2 minutes. Why is a concentrated version of this virus being stored in a syringe ready to inject? It would only have taken a few seconds of footage to show a syringe being loaded from a vial to make this more reasonable.
MORE? I will watch more but I don't especially like the directing of what I saw in the first episode of season two so I might not finish it if it remains like that.
I went to check the actors to see if I had seen them in anything else but hadn't. However I noticed that some characters have varying number of episodes under their belt including more than they showed up in before they died. Stas for example dies in episode 10 but it listed at being in 13 episodes. So curious to see if these are flashback episodes to come or someone just can't count.
I also see there is a short of the same name and premise with only two actors, one being a German/American actor. I can't find out more about that nor how it links to this series.
So while there are gapping plot holes, I was still enthralled with the series and stayed up until 3 am two nights in a row to finish season one. I rarely fastforwarded although there were some times I did when the scenes were very stereotypical like when Mitya and Natashia are in the penthouse suite or the-you-know-it-is-coming "conflict conversation between the daughter and the father about how his work drove them apart (and the wife/mother) but deep down he always really loved her" scene.
0 out of 0 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink