I really didn’t like the opening before the credits, felt straight out of a low budget horror movie. But once Jodie Foster was on the scene, I was on board.
So @Woolen_Horde brought up The Thing and 40 Days of Night. But the vibe I got was The Terror. Anyone remember that little mini series based on a real life 19th century naval expedition to find the Northwest Passage but with a supernatural twist? (Wasn’t that long ago; not sure if it got a lot of eyeballs.)
At least a couple of events brought it to mind. First being the cut-out tongue which we learn must have belonged to an indigenous woman. And second, just at the end when we get a spooky one-eyed polar bear. Now, in The Terror, it wasn’t exactly a polar bear but it wasn’t not a polar bear either… some sort of spirit animal. Here, earlier in the episode, Jody Foster teases Kali Reis about her spirit animal. In The Terror, the spirit bear was bound to the indigenous woman who cut her own tongue out.
Good catch on that, the pieces were familiar but I didn’t immediately connect The Terror.
I enjoyed the first episode, I’m in for the long haul, and I just hope this isn’t a ghost / monster story. I feel like the whole point of True Detective is that the real monsters are…people.
To sum up: it’s a mash-up of True Detective, Mare of Easttown, The Thing/The Head/The Terror, 40 Days of Night.
Anything missing?
I’m guessing between the research station, with their core samples and geobiologists, and the town’s mine, we’re going to find out they Dug Too Deep.
You guys are overthinking it. Just like season one’s Hastur and Carcosa references, I expect the solution to be entirely terrestrial and mundane. True Detective, despite leaning into supernatural tropes, is not about the supernatural. It’s about the personalities and the journeys they go on.
Oh, no, I don’t think there’s going to actually be anything supernatural. In fact, I saw a quote from Issa Lopez to the effect of wanting to walk that same line as season one with there being natural explanations for everything, but a degree of ambiguity.
Well, it’s a bit hard to handwave away how they found the bodies, but I for one would be happy with no ghost story.
It’s kind of like the UFO in Fargo…why the hell was it there…but in the end, didnt really matter. Some weird stuff in this but excited to see where it goes.
I’m not even really sure how it would work, trying to integrate actual Lovecraftian horrors into one of these detective shows. Seems like it would more of less be the ending of Monty Python’s Holy Grail, with the cops swooping in to just arrest everybody.
I mean, the first season just referenced some books that exist in real life and also the show that would be extremely easy for mundane awful people to be obsessed with. It didn’t have mysterious visions of polar bears and ghosts and multiple at least seemingly unrelated people being told “she wakes” (or whatever the exact wording is. I guess you could explain that shit away but it’s gonna require rather more reaching.
Like a game of Delta Green or Call of Cthulhu: your mundane investigators dig too deep, find something incomprehensibly awful and go insane or die. Bummer ending. Exeunt omnes.
Didn’t Denzel and John Goodman already make the definitive ‘detectives vs. the supernatural’ movie?
It’s not quite the same genre, but the Brubaker/Phillips book Fatale is a great mashup of Lovecraft and Noir.
We watched the first episode.
Holy cats was it good. Such a great setting, in Alaska during the long night.
Like others have said, True Detective (at least the first season) was about weird cult shit and wondering if there was some supernatural stuff afoot beyond the murders. But it was just normal cult like serial killer stuff.
This season feels even more supernatural and spooky than that was, but I still expect the show to have some terrestrial reason behind this. I am going to assume it is with a native group that is not very happy with the mining, digging and corporate interests messing up their home and environment.
For instance, the tongue left at the research facility. That was a direct reference to the previous murder of a native activist. One who I would assume was the “she is coming!” warning that was given. Probably a group not very happy about what happened to her and is retaliating against the corporate interests in the area. Just a guess, but I am fascinated to see how it plays out. So far, the cast Foster and Reis in particular, have been amazing. The first episode starts with one hell of a hook too.
Wind River. Also about five million “detective is haunted by the one case they couldn’t crack” stories.
Last year I finally read The Terror, despite having known about the history it was based on for years. Two things stuck out: one, it was really well done; two, it would have been absolutely just as effective if it had cut out the supernatural stuff entirely. Because what actually happened to those people was terrifying.
Simmons made his early career writing horror novels, so that books like Hyperion and The Terror really shine when it comes to building that kind of tension and dread. Also Drood, which pretends to be a monster story but really isn’t.
I just had to post Paul Schrader’s (First Reformed, Master Gardener) “review”
Delightful. (He posted that he wrote that on Ambien… lol)
I love David Lunch films.
Watching this show, someone clearly read the Wikipedia page on the Dyatlov pass incident.