Netflix's Archive 81 is the horror series humanity needs right now

The Guardian

"Humanity needs hokum and never more so than when things are – I think a majority would agree – so relentlessly grim," says Lucy Mangan of the horror series adapted by showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine from the podcast of the same name, starring Mamoudou Athie and Dina Shihabi. "Bring us preposterous set-ups! Bring us ridiculous plots, to whose holes we must turn generously blind eyes! Bring us escalating nonsense, melodrama, unrealism and all the high-energy, low-stakes rest of it! Take us out of ourselves for an hour or a chapter or a reel at a time. For hokum to succeed, however, it needs to take itself seriously – no nods, winks to camera or cynical sneers in the script. Makers need to play it straight, so that viewers can take it how they will. On all these bases, Netflix’s new horror series Archive 81 delivers." Mangan adds: "Over the eight hour-long episodes of the series, Archive 81 ladles out generous portions – if perhaps sometimes at too stately a pace – of conspiracy theories, jump scares, corridor stalkings, things that go bump in the night, resurrected figures from the past, hallucinations (OR ARE THEY?), coded counsel from longtime tenants, haunting music whose terrifying strains drift into Melody’s room at night and put her in a state of nervous collapse, cultish goings on, mysterious smiles from inhabitants of the sixth floor, salutary warnings from fearful dwellers on the first-to-fifth and a gathering promise that – as long as you don’t look too closely at anything or for too long – more or less all will be revealed in a more or less satisfactory way."

ALSO:

• Archive 81 is an eerie, otherworldy tale buried under a frustrating, repetitive outer layer: "Archive 81 is a show that invites, almost demands, constant skepticism. There’s a certain kind of simmering paranoia that runs through this new Netflix series, boiling so clearly that it’s almost impossible to take anything at face value," says Steve Greene. "To a certain extent, that’s the point. In setting up a story about an unassuming archivist who agrees to restore a series of camcorder tapes from the mid-’90s, it’s inevitable that what seems like a simple task will give way to something larger and more unwieldy. What makes Archive 81 such a perplexing viewing experience is how it takes some wild, generation-spanning ideas and strips them down to a pedestrian presentation that robs it of its otherworldly power."
• Archive 81 has too many horror shout-outs, but it does master slow-burning dread: "While Archive 81’s eight episodes fill the time by wandering down dimly lit hallways, staircases, and other haunted-house architectural staples, repetitive dialogue, narrative padding, and an overload of references to other horror properties threaten to overwhelm Sonnenshine’s appreciably chilly world," says Roxana Hadadi. "(The series includes direct nods to or subtle evocations of Rosemary’s Baby, Candyman, The Twilight Zone, The Others, Annihilation, The Shining, The Ring, Solaris, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Exorcist, The Night House, Hereditary, Coherence, Don’t Look Now, Sinister, Velvet Buzzsaw, The Vast of Night, Mike Flanagan, David Lynch, Emily Dickinson, Shirley Jackson, Thomas Ligotti, Mark Z. Danielewski, the theater production Sleep No More, and the aforementioned Lovecraft and Poe, and that’s probably not everything.) Generously, this bounty could be viewed as a love letter to the genre. In execution, though, Archive 81 somewhat lacks a prevailing identity of its own, even as it masters slow-burning dread. Like so many (too many?) recent series, Archive 81 uses a split timeline to begin at the end and then work its way forward by going backward; if that sounds confusing, it’s because throwing off the audience is Archive 81’s intent. Time is as unreliable as people’s identities, and as in flux as their understanding of their own motivations. The regrets and doubts we carry are invisible but weighty, and they push down upon practically everyone in Archive 81. (The characters unaffected by uncertainty are the ones buoyed by zealous fervor, and the difference between these groups of actors, from the sprightliness of their body language to the coyness of their smiles, is stark.)"
• Archive 81 is an urban mystery dipped in the occult, then sprinkled with Black Mirror-like madness: "Trailers for the eight-episode series suggest a monster horror show, but the slow-building, addictive hour-long drama is smarter than your average ghoul fest," says Lorraine Ali. "Loosely based on a podcast of the same name, this mind-bending puzzle pits sanity against reality where the pursuit of lucidity is both a nightmare and a thrill." She adds that despite some flaws, "the long-haul effects of Archive 81 are worth the time spent on this series. Unlike many a mystery streamer, there is a satisfying payoff at the end of the analog mystery — a finale that may signal a new beginning. Or a cruel return trip to the archives. The devil is in the details."
• Archive 81 can be silly, but it builds pretty well: "By the second or third episode, you’ll probably have figured out the key points of what’s going on and probably will have identified a movie, TV show or book that did the same thing better," says Daniel Fienberg. "By an episode or two later, you’ll probably see what the shape of the rest of the season is and then by the cliffhanger in the finale, you’ll be curious where a follow-up season would go. Whether the difference between being 'gripped' and 'curious' might have been bridged by feeding that Lynch wolf a little more, I can’t say for sure."
• Archive 81 has the weirdest ending it could possibly have: "Horror as a genre has little room for subtlety, which is part of its charm. Archive 81, the new horror series on Netflix, isn't subtle in the least, practically hammering the viewer over the head with literary and filmic references so that you know exactly what the show is attempting to do at every juncture," says Emma Stefansky. "The story, loosely based on the first season of the fiction podcast of the same name, is a hit-or-miss slow burn, much more fun as a game of references and allusions than as a horror series. But picking up on the Les Diaboliques movie posters in the background or the three (3!) Tarkovsky name-drops will do nothing to prepare you for the season finale, the wildest and funniest ending I've seen in a minute."
• Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine says the Archive 81 podcast served more as a jumping off point than as a blueprint: “It’s very different from the podcast in many ways,” Sonnenshine acknowledged. “But it also hopefully very much captures the spirit of it and follows a general same kind of story. But the thing that we wanted to do was really establish these two characters, Dan and Melody, as characters that had a drive and a quest that they were on that would parallel each other, and that’s sort of where we started.”