This week, two new movies came out, The King’s Daughter and Redeeming Love. Both are romances, that did not intrigue me enough to drive to theaters this weekend. Now, I do not have anything wrong with romances, but both movies were ranked below three stars on Letterboxd, so that really discouraged me. If I were to go and see either of the films, it would have been Redeeming Love, because it takes place during the gold rush in California, and that sounds like it could be visually beautiful scenery wise, but going to a two-hour movie to see nice scenery, again, did not get me too interested this week. But have no fear faithful reader because I still have something exciting to share, Yellowjackets, a ten-part documentary about the importance of bees and pollination. (Not really)
Yellowjackets just finished its inaugural season on Showtime, it was ten episodes long, and it is somewhere between a psychological horror and a mystery. The premise for the show is that a girl’s high school soccer team is good enough to go to play in the national tournament in 1996, and one of the parents of a player is rich enough to charter the team a private plane to the tournament. The plane’s engine fails, and it crash lands in the middle of the wilderness. There were some deaths from the crash, but a large group survived about seven of the girls, a young assistant coach, and the two sons of the head coach. Quickly they decide the best thing to do is to search for resources because there have been no signs of help coming, partially due to foul play, and they work their way down to a lake. Then they find an abandoned cabin, and that turns into home base, but with any group of teenagers stuck together for a long period of time, situations get very tense at times, and secrets start to come out. Then at the end a cult forms, and it starts to get real weird, and great! The last few episodes ramp up the story nicely.
This is paired with the present-day version of the girls, so they are in their early 40s. It centers mainly on five of the girls, but it is unclear how many of the girls make it out of the disaster. Life initially does not seem too bad for any of them, but as the story unfolds, there is a ton of unhappiness that is mainly derived from the trauma of the events that occurred while they were in the wilderness. The real story for the girls this time begins when the coach’s son, Travis commits suicide, and they find a symbol that they found in the woods at the suicide spot. Then some of them start to get mysterious text messages asking for bribes. One of them was running a political campaign, and she was willing to do anything to make it go away, and of course at the end there is a high school reunion scene.
The opening scene of the show is a girl running through the woods, and she is screaming and potentially being chased. She then falls into a trap, and then we see a group of people wearing masks fashioned out of animal skins and other pieces of nature sitting around a fire. It was truly an unsettling and spooky way to open a show, and it set the tone for the series. Once it started to cut back and forth between modern day and 1996, it gave me the idea that it would be a very fixed story and only one season. I especially continued this thought through the blackmail plot, I did not see it being dragged out for more than a season. I figured the season would end, and they find out who was black mailing them, and the girls would get rescued in ’96, but I was very wrong. In the opening scene it is clearly winter, and at the end of season one, it is just getting to winter in the wild, and then after they find out who is blackmailing them, because that story line could not have been more than a season, something else happens that ups the stakes. So initially I was very reluctant to want a second season, but the more I listened to podcasts talk about it, and think about the possibilities, I have become increasingly excited about spending another season in the wilderness, but I am worried about the prospect of Showtime trying to drag this on for too long, I think one more season, would probably be good enough.
One of the biggest questions that this series raises is if there is something supernatural at play. There are multiple times when things occur in the woods where the viewer is left to wonder, was that just a coincidence or is there something more sinister out there keeping them trapped within its boundary. One of the examples comes from the wolf attack. Did the wolves just happen to come upon the group when they were trying to escape, or did they cross some magical boundary that alerted some natural force that they needed to be brought back. Then there was the second plane crash, which I do not think is spoiling anything, because from the first scene we know that they make it to winter, and that the plane cannot be their salvation. When the second plane goes down, it seems like the teddy bear in the passenger seat ignites, and that it is not a mechanical failure that causes this. So again, was there some magical threshold crossed that caused this supernatural event or was it just mechanical failure? There are other examples as well, like when they are playing the Ouija type game that results in a girl speaking in French and a window breaking, that if watched at dark will send chills down your spine. So by the end of the first season, I am on the supernatural side, but others argue that it is their trauma from the event that occurred that could be causing them to misremember how events turned out, or that the experiences were so dramatic that while they were happening the events seemed more dreamlike and inexplicable as they occurred.
The best way to describe this series would be a blend of Lord of the Flies and I know What You Did Last Summer. Lord of the Flies because they crash land, and the longer they are out there, the more the rules of society seem to fade away. This is true in Yellowjackets as well, the longer they are out there, the more they seem to play by their own rules and become more ruthless. Then in I know What You Did Last Summer, a group of friends run over someone, and they try to cover it up. Then they start to get notes that there was a witness. So this is similar to the story once they are all adults. It is a great blending of the two, and it is made even better by the excellent story telling by the creators of the show. It makes both versions of the stories mentioned above so much more brutal and intense, and it is hard to stop watching.
Normally I am not a big fan of the binge model, but when I started to watch this show last weekend, I could not stop watching. I watched two on Sunday, and then on MLK day I watched five… It does take away some of the ability for a person to fully digest what they are watching, but I just could not stop watching until I got to the conclusion. It was also just the right amount of spooky. There were times when I was feeling very unsettled sitting at home alone watching it on the couch, but you cannot let a few scares prevent you from watching this show! It is even packed with teen drama and some romance if you are into that. It is going to get huge, so do not miss out on this masterpiece, that I genuinely would not be surprised if this is the best show, I will watch all year.
Other Movies This Week:
Phantom Thread: A famous designer falls in love with a girl, there relationship is far from perfect, and at times, it is incredibly awkward, but they find a way to make it work and keep each other in check. It is critically acclaimed, and a good way to spend two hours.
The Super Bob Einstein Movie: A documentary about Bob Einstein, he was a comedian that passed away recently. I did not know much about him, but this does a decent job of showing his work. There is a lot of physical comedy, and there are plenty of interviews with the height of comedy that loved him and sing his praises.
New Ratings:
Phantom Thread: 4 Stars
The Super Bob Einstein Movie: 3 Stars
P.S: I start grad school this week, so I hope to be able to continue to write these papers, but I do not know how high of a demand my classes will have, so hopefully I will continue to be here every week.
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