‘True Detective: Night Country’ review: Alaska-set season starring Jodie Foster isn’t good enough

Premiering almost exactly 10 years after the release of the first season and almost exactly five years after the third season centered on Mahershala Ali (time is a flat circle, as the current punchline says) True Detective: Night Country it stands precariously in conversation and contrast to the show created and directed by Nic Pizzolatto.

Created by Issa López, who wrote or co-wrote most of the season and directed all six episodes, night country is, in some ways, a throwback to the first season, bringing back the uncomfortable intersection between the true crime narrative and the supernatural overtones. The season also includes direct nods to the first season’s visuals and dialogue, generally unnecessary quotes that feel like a concession to the corner of the fandom that adores Pizzolatto, since otherwise night country is at odds with the previous seasons in terms of theme and overall perspective.

night country It casts aside Pizzolatto’s characteristic masculine melancholy for a feminine story that personalizes and internalizes the anthology’s typically intricate plot in a refreshing and often powerful way. But like the first real detective season will not tell its story in eight episodes, night country it seems unnecessarily truncated in key areas, without the opportunity to truly inhabit its most distinctive elements.

It’s December 17 in Ennis, Alaska, the last sunset of the year before months of prolonged darkness. Located 150 minutes north of the Arctic Circle, Ennis is a medium-sized city where the local mining company and the indigenous community have clashed for years.

At the nearby TSALAL Arctic Research Station, home to a small international team of scientists dedicated to mysterious geological investigations, something very bad has happened. The entire staff has disappeared, and when they are found, it is a frozen nightmarish tableau, a cold conception of hell by Hieronymus Bosch. There’s very little evidence, but several details (a mysterious spiral symbol, a tongue) connect the investigation to a dead Native woman whose murder has remained, pun intended, a cold case for six years. It’s a tragedy that still haunts local cop-turned-state trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), who quickly upsets Ennis’ former partner and current local police chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster).

Danvers doesn’t want to expose these old wounds, in part because she’s haunted by her own ghosts; As several characters mention, in Alaska – especially Alaska in the endless winter – the dead and the living are in frequent contact. Danvers also has tangible concerns, including an increasingly rebellious stepdaughter (Isabella Star LaBlanc’s Leah), a surly superior officer who keeps undermining her authority (John Hawkes’ Hank), and that officer’s wet-behind-the-ears son. (Pete, by Finn Bennett). ). Additionally, Danvers’ position in the city is fragile because a series of poor sexual choices have left her less popular among the most powerful people in the city (most of them deluded women).

For a couple of weeks, Evangeline, Liz and Pete will have to sacrifice the joy of the Christmas holidays to unearth painful traces of the past, going deeper and deeper into the darkness, the inhospitable landscape and… preparing to point at their screen… the country of the night.

While men and their insecurities sucked up all the oxygen in the first three seasons (often intentionally), the new season is dominated by women, shaped by demons as disturbing as those that warped and drove Rust Cohle, Ray Velcoro, and Wayne. Hays in the series. previous installments. Outlaw fantasies from the far reaches of the Arctic and Antarctic tend to be coded as masculine (the realm of rude men with unruly beards), but Ennis (a name that itself captures truncated masculinity) is a feminine space.

Like López’s ultra-creepy article Tigers are not afraida coming-of-age horror hybrid set against the backdrop of Mexico’s drug war, night country It is a disturbing piece in which the supernatural elements are as present and concrete as one chooses to believe them to be. General spirits and specific indigenous superstitions could be directly directing the action, or they could be byproducts of an unnatural and disorienting living situation in which day and night, past and present, the living and the dead lose clear definition.

Of course, with real detective fans, this is a dangerous uncertainty to foster. Much of the disappointment of the first season came from viewers convinced that the Yellow King and all the pagan minutiae of the season were building to a crazy finale full of goblins, monsters, and Lovecraftian entities, when instead it was “just” a mystery of murder rooted in natural evil. In night country, there are frequent jump scares and a pervasive sense of supernatural dread, but there is as much discussion of mental health and the ill effects of this grim environment as it is of the poisoning associated with mines. So it is possible that everything in night country It is paranormal, just as it is possible for everything to be entirely rational. The story comes to an ending and resolution that I found simultaneously silly and consistent with the messages of the show I’d been watching, though I’m sure it will be polarizing; I guess it’s also a play on words.

I was less disappointed with the first one. real detective final, because I didn’t expect the appearance of Cthulhu in my mystery resolution. When it comes to the room real detective season, could have used more of the grounded and less of the fantastic. It makes sense to me that the more time the series spends immersed in Iñupiat culture (not enough), the more organic and less sensational its treatment of their mystical traditions feels. The more we learn about life in Ennis (the broader aspects of the mining business and the nitty-gritty, like price gouging at grocery stores), the more the location feels like a character (and the more opportunities for Leah to LaBlanc and Fiona Shaw). enigmatic outsider Rose Aguineau to feel like real characters).

Filming in Iceland, real detective It captures a spectacular mood, although not always with freshness or depth. The setting should be a total point of differentiation, but instead, I found myself constantly thinking about all the different end-of-the-Earth genre stories that night country is similar to, of Insomnia (more “Country of the day”) to Blackout to 30 days of night to max’s house Head to FX’s current (and more entertaining, but ultimately less satisfying) Murder at the end of the world. For all the real detective references and branding, what night country ends up feeling like this The horror Satisfies Easttown Mare.

And if you’re trying Easttown Mare As an anthology in which a grimly determined Oscar-winning actress solves a regionally specific mystery with the help of an inexperienced sidekick while dealing with a rambunctious teenage daughter, Jodie Foster is an exceptional representative of Kate Winslet. As the dedicated skeptic in the article says: “The dead are dead. There is no heaven. There is no hell,” Danvers says, one of several times she rebukes the more outlandish elements of the story: She is all harshness and impulsive decisions, in contrast to the searing, yet quiet, intensity that Reis conveys. It’s not always clear how much “acting” Reis, who started out as a boxing champion, is doing, but my goodness, she has a compelling presence.

With Foster and Reis skillfully fulfilling the required two-handed game real detective structure, men remain in a dull secondary capacity. Bennett is likely to be serious about Evan Peters. Easttown Mare The role and Hawkes always offer complexity, but at a certain point the season breaks down between the gripping material with Danvers and Navarro and… everything else. Even an actor as interesting as Christopher Eccelston can’t do much with a role that is reduced to Danvers’ boss and occasional lover and nothing more. The best male performance of the season comes from Joel D. Montgrand as Qavvik, the gruff bar owner who only wants to love Navarro, not tame her.

The rationalization of the general plot in the night country The final stretch, a process that apparently required three to four writers per episode, weakens the season overall, but at least builds momentum toward a conclusion that worked for me conceptually. Since I’m not sure of any real detective season has had a totally satisfactory ending, that is an advantage, although hasty, for night country.