DARK/WEB, Amazon Prime Series. A Review of the Pilot
In the next eight days, I will watch one episode per day (episodes are called chapters in this series and there are 8 total). I will review each one briefly.
Today I watched the first chapter. This story had a few layers. I read a little about the series on IMDb and Wikipedia to orient myself….here’s the IMDb link if you want to do that too.
Is this really Amazon Prime’s answer to Netflix’s The Black Mirror? Some say this is the model for DARK/WEB, but there is an overall story arc that connects all of the chapters, so not exactly like The Black Mirror. I’ll know more in a few days and can report then.
This series is one season only. As of now, there is no indication that a season 2 will be made.
Written by Mario Miscione, Boman Modine and Michael Nardelli, the story begins with a mysterious set of images and screens where a young woman is obviously being harassed via the internet to do something (we don’t know what) she does not want to do. It then cuts to the apartment of a recently laid off reporter by the name of Ethan Neary. He is obviously in a bad spot, sleeping on his sofa, drinking too much, his apartment a mess. He has missed a number of calls from a high school friend (Sam Daniels) who has been trying to contact him. Sam is anxious about repeated emails that have been sent to her from another old high school friend, Molly Solis. Ethan has received messages as well. Is this really Molly? They are both worried about computer viruses, therefore reticent to open the file, but Ethan decides to open the attachment, which reveals a short story that he ends up reading aloud over the phone to Sam…the read aloud cuts to new action, but with different characters.
At this point, the story being read becomes what the audience sees on the screen.
Chapter 1 of DARK/WEB is about a rideshare driver who experiences a glitch in the app supposed to help him perform his job. Now, instead of simply giving him directions, it talks to him about who all the people are he is driving. He’s driving late at night to make ends meet for his young family and it turns out many of the people he is driving are awful folks. The rideshare app knows details about their evil and begins directing him to do certain things to stop these people from exerting their power in ways that will hurt others. You can imagine where this might go.
Three things I like about this chapter:
- Quick set-up that indicates a mystery
- Amazingly fast empathy for the main character (the rideshare driver)
- Tension around the craziness he is exposing himself to while driving…so much so…I needed to pause the recording for bit and think whether or not I wanted to see what I imagined to be a gory or troubling end.
I won’t give anything away, but the viewer does become invested in the driver’s wellbeing and that is an indication of good character writing. It happens fast that the viewer is rooting for him. Chapter 1 was worth the 27 minutes. I recommend if you like tension and dystopian/cyberpunk/mystery.
