Tag: Psychological Thriller

Severance Season 1 Episode 4: The You You Are Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

The jeopardy ramps up in episode 4, as Helly’s desperation to resign keeps her in the break room and then leads to increasingly dangerous attempts to get through to her outie. The loss of Petey triggers outie Mark’s grief for his wife, while innie Mark ponders what to do about the map Petey left him. Burt visits MDR and makes Irving an offer he can’t refuse. Dylan continues to offer sage advice that nobody takes.

This would be a very different show if people listened to Dylan’s common sense more often.

Self-harming trigger warning for this episode.

Recap

It’s late afternoon and Helly (Britt Lower) is still in the Break Room. She’s been there for hours, since before lunch of this workday that started in episode 3. Even Milchick (Tramell Tillman) looks droopy around the edges, but he dutifully informs her that she’s still not sincere enough in her reading of the mandatory Lumon confession of Original Sin, ever after reading it 259 times. However, when the clock on the wall clicks over to 5:15, their shift is over, so Milchick’s mood lightens, he methodically organizes his space and puts the recording of Helly’s confessions in his shirt pocket.

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The Third Day Part 3/Winter: Season 1 Episode 6 Last Day- The Dark Recap

~ Metacrone

The Third Day S1Ep6 Jess Sits in the Altar Position at Church 1

Episode 6, The Dark, is the third day in Helen’s cycle on the island. She’s found Sam, so now it’s time for their confrontation. The islanders will, of course, do everything possible to interfere, up to and including murdering each other, but Helen has already proven that her energy is strong and she will persevere. It’s time for some answers.

Ellie continues her initiation into the island’s ancient beliefs with Kail. She meets more of the true believers and learns how she can help them, including toying with cult membership. Lu goes on the run, retracing the steps we’ve seen her parents take during their time on the island. She combines their journeys, but her path is also uniquely her own. By the end of the episode, each family member will have been put through their own trial and will come to their own conclusions about Osea Island. Helen and Sam each find their own reward.

Recap

Helen (Naomie Harris) and Sam (Jude Law) walk silently toward each other on the dock. They’re more like two enemies who are about to duel than a husband and wife who are about to be reunited after 9 months of separation. Jude Law and Naomie Harris project intense chemistry, love and longing underlying the bitterness between them.

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The Third Day Part 3/Winter: Season 1 Episode 5 Tuesday- The Daughter Recap

~ Metacrone

The Third Day S1Ep5 Secret Esus 5

With Jess in labor and the islanders at war, in episode 5 Helen is called on to act as midwife. She also reveals that she’s searching for Sam on Osea. Ellie gets to know Kail, leaving Lu to her own adventures. We learn more about how Sam’s disappearance and Nathan’s death affected the family.

Recap

The story picks up in the middle of the night, with Helen sound asleep and dreaming about Sam standing on a beach, calling to her. He calls her by his nickname for her, “Cass”. She wakes up when a woman screams.

Mrs Martin’s implication that of course the pub is safe was about as truthful as any other message she sends.

The woman continues screaming and both girls wake up, so Helen gets up to find the source of the sound. Lu, ever the sensible one in the family, tells her not to go. Helen responds by ordering her two girls to stay upstairs, alone, in the dark room.

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The Third Day Part 3/Winter: Season 1 Episode 4 Monday- The Mother Recap

~ Metacrone

Part 3 of The Third Day, Winter, picks up several months after Part 2, Autumn. It’s been nine months since Sam came to the island in May, which makes it February of the following year.

Part 3 follows single mom Helen (Naomie Harris) and her two young daughters, Ellie (Nico Parker), who’s almost 14, and Lu, short for Talulah (Charlotte Gairdner-Mihell), age 9. They arrive on Osea Island for a brief holiday, only to find that the islanders are at war again and there’s no room at any of the inns. In fact, the inns are permanently closed.

The sacred tourism idea from Parts 1 and 2 seems to have been scrapped. Instead, some residents are attempting to flee the island in tears. But with all of the chaos, the island tourism board forgot to take down room listings, so now the villagers have three cold, tired and hungry tourists to deal with, much like they had to deal with Sam at an inopportune time in Part 1.

Weird how this keeps happening, isn’t it?

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The Third Day Part 1/ Summer: Season 1 Episode 3 Sunday- The Ghost Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

The Third Day S1Ep3 Mrs Martin & Sam

Episode 3, The Ghost, answers many of the questions that the first two episodes set up, but it can be a difficult hour of television to watch. Sam starts the hour as a kidnap victim who’s still high on a hallucinogenic drug. What follows is somewhere between a prank-filled ramble through the Fairy Realm and a torturous scramble to escape the Island of the Dead before he’s killed by one of its insane residents. At least Sam is still wearing Mrs Martin’s magic shoes.

There are three competing mythological strands in Part 1 which are being pushed onto Sam by various factions of islanders. In some ways, Sam is on the classic Hero’s Journey, following in the footsteps of Odysseus and the legends of King Arthur. There are also elements of the Christian Stations of the Cross, based on Jesus last day before his crucifixion, in Sam’s weekend events, and those continue on Sunday. And the islanders have pushed Sam toward the heroic Threefold Death all weekend.

The Threefold Death is an ancient Indo-European rite which involves death by hanging (or strangulation or falling), drowning (or poisoning) and by wounding (or fire/burning). The death might involve all three injuries happening to one person or a different person experiencing each injury. Combined, the human sacrifices made to Esus (god of war/hanging), Teutatis (tribal protector/fire) and Taranis (god of thunder, sky, sun and wheel of the year/drowning) were Threefold Deaths. Some on the island want to kill Sam, either for real or symbolically. Other want him to do the killing, either for real or symbolically.

For two days, Sam refused to take the bait and also avoided capture by the more violent islanders. At the end of episode 2, the island’s main instigators seemed to have finally forced the issue, drugging/poisoning Sam, then leaving him alone in the woods like a child in a fairy tale. Are Mrs Martin and Jess acting as Sam’s Judases? Is Mrs Martin the island’s fairy queen, leading Jess and Epona to tempt this Odysseus into staying an extra year or 20? Or are the islanders preparing to act out the Osea version of The Wicker Man?

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The Third Day Part 1/Summer: Season 1 Episode 2 Saturday- The Son Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

The Third Day S1Ep2 Jess & Sam

In episode 2, The Son, Sam and Jess spend another day and night together on Osea Island. We learn more about Jess’s situation with her daughters and the death of Sam’s son. Sam visits the island’s historian to learn more about local customs, then in the evening, he and Jess take part in a dry run of the upcoming festival.

It’s all perfectly normal and nothing strange happens at all.

Recap

The episode begins with Sam’s nightmare from episode 1, which could be a recurring dream. Sam is in a moonlit, open field. He’s not trapped or encumbered- maybe he wishes he still was. In the distance, he sees the boy through a rounded opening in a wall of forest branches and greenery. As Sam calls out for him, the boy runs away and disappears through the portal, into whatever realm is on the other side- purgatory, death, uncertainty, H*ll.

This is a living wall, instead of a wall of stone, suggesting that some part of Sam hasn’t accepted his son’s death. It’s also a reminder that the islanders inherited the Druids’ belief in reincarnation, with its fluid boundaries between life, death and rebirth. Death is not necessarily an impenetrable wall here.

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The Third Day Season 1 Part 1/Summer: Episode 1 Friday- The Father Recap

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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This is a recap of Part 1, episode 1, The Father, which includes full details of the plot. My non-spoilery review of the season is HERE.

The Third Day takes place in a remote part of the UK, on an island that’s cut off from the mainland for most of the day. Osea Island is accessible by car for only a few hours a day at low tide by driving across an ancient Roman causeway that floods when the tide rises. It’s inhabited by a small community of year round residents who have their own traditions and beliefs which blend the old Celtic religion with Christianity.

Sam (Jude Law), a grieving father, stumbles into this community accidentally after saving the life of a young woman from Osea. He feels a connection to the community that he doesn’t understand, but also a sense of chaotic urgency as various obstacles prevent him from leaving the island and returning to his own troubled life.

Osea Island is a real island off the coast of Essex which takes on a life of its own in the story. The characters seem to travel over every inch of this tiny paradise as the show progresses through summer, autumn and winter. This allows viewers to get to know Osea’s tempestuous personality and beauty up close and to get a sense of how its natural elements affect the direction of the community.

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HBO’s The Third Day Review

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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HBO’s The Third Day is a story of loss and isolation and how those experiences affect the mind, from simple grief to community wide torment twisted into ritual ordeal. The tale is timely in a way the creators probably couldn’t have imagined when they began working on it.

At the center of the series is Sam, a man who’s never recovered from the loss of a child or the shape his need for redemption takes. The series is also a psychological thriller and folk horror narrative which takes place on a remote British island accessible only by boat or an ancient Roman causeway that’s above water for just a few hours a day at low tide. The tiny community on Osea Island have developed their own traditions and beliefs, which combine ancient Celtic mythology with the unique history and location of the island. Visitors to the island are inevitably drawn into the community’s rituals, which are meant to restore balance to the world.

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Hanna Season 2 Episode 2: The Trial Recap

~ Metacrone

Amazon Studios, Prime Video, Christopher Raphael

Episode 2 finds Marissa working at an office in Paris while keeping Hanna stowed away in an apartment and making plans to move her permanently to Canada. Shockingly, Hanna makes other plans.

Carmichael brings Clara to The Meadows. She reconnects with Sandy and Jules and figures out exactly who pointed Carmichael toward her mother. With her name changed to Clemency, 249/Clara observes her new environment and takes action, then observes some more. Terri and Leo both step in to help her adjust to her new life.

Jules and Sandy sink deeper into their new personas while also soaking up their political and tactical training. Sandy learns that she enjoys acting as a big sister to the other girls, while Jules delves into literature and philosophy that asks questions about society and identity.

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Movie Review and Analysis: I’m Thinking of Ending Things

~ Metacrone

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I’m Thinking of Ending Things * 2020 * Rated R * 2 Hours 14 Minutes

😸😸😸🌑🌑 Rated 3/5 Happy Lap Cats

I’m Thinking of Ending Things focuses on a young woman whose name changes throughout the film, so she’s billed as “Young Woman”. We’re introduced to her as Lucy, so I’m going to refer to her as that, because I hate it when major characters are treated like objects. Lucy is played by Jessie Buckley, who was amazing in the critically acclaimed HBO miniseries Chernobyl last year (2019) as Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the pregnant wife of a firefighter with severe radiation exposure.

Lucy has a newish boyfriend, Jake, played with understated creepiness by Jesse Plemens of Black Mirror: USS Callistor and Breaking Bad. Plemens is good at what he does, making it hard to separate the actor from the character. Plus, for attentive viewers, the first glimpse of his character shows him watching Lucy in the street from a 2nd floor window, with some strange, mumbled dialogue playing in the background. The sinister stalker vibe is established immediately.

An elderly man (Guy Boyd) is seen from the window first, who then turns into Jake. Before long, brief scenes of the elderly man working as a janitor in a high school where the musical Oklahoma! is rehearsing are intermittently inserted into the main storyline.

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