EIt takes a while for things to get going in “A Murder at the End of the World,” but soon you can’t take your eyes off the characters and story of this unusual thriller, which combines the straightforwardness of Scandinavian crime novels with sharp cultural criticism the digital age and the wonderful sensitivity of the author duo Brit Marlin and Zal Batmanglij.
As we know from another, highly acclaimed work by the two, they care about the careful drawing of their main characters and the tonality before committing to the story: With “The OA” they created a genre-busting mystery series in 2016, which, however, after only two relays were set. Now they are returning with a completed seven-part series, the focus of which is once again a young woman with a seventh sense: the amateur detective Darby Hart (Emma Corrin), who, in her mid-twenties, wrote a book about her successful solution to a series of femicides more than half a year ago decade when she receives an exclusive invitation.
She is surprised that her name is on the guest list of tech giant Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) for a world movers meeting in his remote Icelandic high-tech hotel. Ronson is an influential mogul of the digital age who cultivates a God complex and believes he can predict and direct the course of human history. Owens Ronson is strongly reminiscent of Elon Musk: cult star, tech autocrat, paranoid who wants to save the planet with “alternative intelligences”. For someone like Darby, and not just for her, this man is not a messiah, but a omen.
Owens Ronson is very reminiscent of Elon Musk
But Darby is a fan of Andy’s wife, legendary hacker Lee (Marling), who was bullied online after writing a feminist manifesto and is now raising their five-year-old son, Zoomer. As it turns out, in addition to Darby, eight tech geniuses from various backgrounds have accepted the Ronsons’ invitation: the lunar settlement developer Sian (Alice Braga), the climate scientist Rohan (Javed Khan), the radical filmmaker Martin (Jermaine Fowler), the urban architect Lu Mei (Joan Chen), the robotic engineer Oliver (Ryan Haddad), the entrepreneur David (Raúl Esparza), the futurist Ziba (Pegah Ferydoni) – and the digital artist Bill (Harris Dickinson), with whom Darcy once shared a deep, complicated love when they were together tried to find the murderer of eleven women, as is revealed in flashbacks.
Then a murder occurs at the end of the world, a snowstorm strands the guests, and suddenly Darby is in her element. As the daughter of a forensic doctor, she witnessed her father as a child investigating the causes of death (and admonishing his young trainee to always stick to the facts).
There is no question that Marlin and Batmanglij, who also direct, borrow from Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” (formerly “Ten Little Negroes”). But her piece goes far beyond the classic whodunnit. The invited guests and the Ronsons themselves, but also Darby Hart, only become more and more precise and sometimes disturbing as things progress. The plot strikes a chord that causes the circumstances to shift several times. Darby’s directness contrasts with the conceit of the movers and shakers in the chic Ronson retreat, who mostly treat her with condescension. In general, the contrasts here are numerous. There are the warm brown tones of the past and there is the cold blue of the digitally composed present; the vast landscape of Bill and Darby’s crime-hunting road trip and the claustrophobic confines of Ronson’s bunker; the romanticism of analog back then, which was fraught with risks, and the supposedly secure digital world now.
However, there are a few inconsistencies: that a technically skilled young woman like Darby in the “intelligent”, i.e. completely information-networked hotel of a tech titan, does not hesitate to consult the holographic AI butler Ray (Edoardo Ballerini) to solve her cases, is just as suspicious as some gaps in the surveillance system of Andy Ronson’s Brave New World. But they fade away in this multi-layered piece, which is less about solving the crime itself and instead uses the search for the perpetrator to uncover ever-increasing layers of the characters and the story. Darby and Bill’s teenage love story could be a standalone series, and the many subtleties in Corrin and Dickinson’s performances alone make this miniseries worth watching.
But there is more. The authors confidently undermine the tendency of the serial killer genre to turn the viewer into a voyeur and tell the story sensitively and cleverly. In the end, this seven-parter is a surprising amount. Last but not least, it is a play about fear and control and power and powerlessness that is far scarier than any crime drama we have seen on television in a long time.
A Murder at the End of the World starts today on Disney+.
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