True Detective: Night Country Review: An Invigorating Reinvention of HBO’s Hit Crime Series
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The post True Detective: Night Country Review: An Invigorating Reinvention of HBO’s Hit Crime Series appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: At the end of every year in the small Alaskan town of Ennis, the sun sets for a weeks-long period in which the sun sets entirely from mid-December to after the new year. In that darkness hides all manner of things: corruption, sin, violence, and memories we’d just as soon choose to leave out in the black. Add to that a pollutant-heavy mine, a group of Indigenous activists eager to shut it down, and
In that oblivion lies eight bodies, nude, frozen, and screaming in agony — the entire complement of a nearby research station investigating new tech solutions out in the permafrost. It’s a bizarre crime scene for Ennis Police Chief Elizabeth Danvers (Jodie Foster) to handle, complicated all the more by the reappearance of her former partner Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), now a state trooper after an incident years ago that tore apart their dynamic. Navarro is insistent that Danvers reopen a cold case involving an Iñupiaq activist found brutally murdered years ago. Little do the two know that the cases may be more connected than they thought.
Bury Your Friends: In its first three seasons, True Detective was a testament to the highs and lows of Nic Pizzolatto’s writing prowess: Spooky and melancholic in its excellent first season, pulpy and exploitative in its second, murky in its third. Bless us, then, that HBO saw fit to hand the reins over to Mexican filmmaker Issa López for its fourth season, subtitled Night Country — a refreshing revamp to the formula that brought some much-needed mystery (and mysticism) back to the gritty crime anthology series’ DNA.
López, a veteran of Mexican film whose most familiar work for U.S. audiences is likely her superlative 2019 horror film Tigers Are Not Afraid, builds her spin on the series’ essential formula — two mismatched detectives, a complicated case that tests their personal and professional fortitude — into her signature slow-paced fairytale sensibilities. In interviews, she’s described this season as a “dark mirror” of Season 1, which bears out in its opening seconds: A quote from “The King in Yellow,” the metaphysical hub of the show’s first season.
Then, the first few minutes, following the inhabitants of Tsalal Research Station before their mysterious disappearance, play out like something from The Thing. Throw a stone at the TV landscape over the last few decades, and you’ll hit a dozen miniseries featuring a small town coming apart at the seams in the wake of a mysterious murder. But Night Country elevates its concerns with López’s superlative command of tone: The chilly Alaskan environment, perpetually cloaked in darkness, reflects the darkness that lies underneath each character and the original sins that took place upon that land (systemic racism, abuse of women, Native displacement and disenfranchisement, the crime of manmade climate change) in ways that weave together such disparate concerns into a cohesive whole.
Ask the Question: It’s not True Detective without that most classic of crime-drama staples: A pair of messed-up cops trying to repair their broken lives through the case they’ve chosen to pour all of themselves into. In some respects, Danvers and Navarro follow the rough outline set up by Rust Cohle and Marty Hart in the first season — Foster is the grizzled old hand with extraordinary detective skills and a messed-up personal life, while Reis’ search for justice is complicated with mysterious visions of something… else. Something beyond.
True Detective: Night Country (Max)
It’s an astonishing pair of performances, led by a brittle, intense Foster, whose Danvers leads one to imagine a world where Clarice Starling was punished for her ambition and got lost along the way. She’s gruff, endlessly pragmatic; she sees little qualm with sleeping with whomever she wants, whether they’re married or not. Her half-Indigenous daughter (Isabella Star LaBlanc) won’t talk to her, as she desperately tries to carve out an identity for herself whether as Iñupiaq, a queer woman, or both — gestures Danvers all but sneers at.
But if there’s one takeaway to have from Night Country’s cast, it’s Reis, continuing the soulful, intense work she began in her 2021 breakout thriller Catch the Fair One. Reis’ towering frame (she’s a former champion boxer), the twin studs that frame her powerful jawline, her piercing eyes — she’s a brilliant foil for Foster’s irascibility. Her connection to her people, complicated as it is, helps tie the mystery into its broader flirtations with the metaphysical, the Twin Peaks-y connections to something beyond our understanding that may or may not be fueling the strange happenings around them.
True Detective: Night Country (Max)
This feeling of standing on the precipice of something dark, and holding desperately onto your humanity, resonates with the supporting cast as well. Take Fiona Shaw’s Rose, a mysterious woman who lives on the edge of town and feels more attuned with the ice than most. Hank Prior (John Hawkes) is another Ennis cop who lives in the shadow of his failed marriage and Danvers taking the job he thought was his. Meanwhile his son, Peter (Finn Bennett), as close to an innocent soul as there is in this town, is nonetheless strained by the demands of the job and the ways this case will mark him forever.
Just Standing There, Rotting: The world of Night Country feels fully realized in much the same way Twin Peaks was: Tár cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister builds this world as a pitched battle between black and white, the ink-dark void of Ennis’ eternal night punctuated by the limited reach of headlights and flashlights. Existential horror mixes with López’s unique strain of pitch-black humor, whether it comes out of Danvers’ no-nonsense lips or the blood-curdling scream of a near-frozen victim.
But there’s an overriding sweetness to all the pain, especially in Danvers and Navarro’s curdled dynamic — the feeling that these two women share the same pains, and even caused a few of them in each other. The act, the work of solving the case brings them back together in ways that prove profound for them both.
The Verdict: After a dodgy couple of seasons, it’s invigorating to see True Detective in sure, solid hands. While it doesn’t dance about in time quite like Season 1, Night Country still hums with that sense of the terrifyingly possible — as seen through the eyes of two cops who’ve seen the worst of humanity, sometimes in the mirror. The world contains horrors unfathomable to man nor beast, and will always keep its deepest secrets out of the light. But in grappling with, and even understanding them, we can maybe come away with a greater understanding of ourselves.
Where’s It Playing? True Detective: Night Country pierces the veil on Max starting January 14th.
Trailer:
True Detective: Night Country Review: An Invigorating Reinvention of HBO’s Hit Crime Series
Clint Worthington
Popular Posts
