posted on: October 19, 2020
Ambrose is even more mannered as Dorothy, which makes sense for a woman trying her damnedest to act like everything is fine, but also comes across as a bit much, a bit too actorly. M. Night Shyamalan's Servant is a slow-burn nanny nightmare: Review Apple TV+ delivers a bracing and odd psychological thriller from Shyamalan and Tony Basgallop. There’s something fundamental to the nature of horror stories that demands the spell they cast over the audience not last very long — especially because their plots often require the heroes to do dumb things that the audience will start to question after a while. He’s a living doll that’s been given to the Turners to help coax Dorothy out of the shock of losing the actual Jericho not long after he was born, for reasons that won’t be clarified for several episodes. The early scares and creepy vibes fade away long before it’s over. A review of the Apple TV+ series “Servant,” produced and directed in part by M. Night Shyamalan, and starring Toby Kebbell, Rupert Grint, and Lauren Ambrose. In the first episode, directed by Shyamalan, Dorothy, Sean, and Julian are frequently depicted in extremely tight close-ups, presumably to convey the claustrophobic discomfort of living in the Turner home and the fact that the characters and the audience are, at this point, unable to see a larger picture. This seems, at first, like a concession to Ambrose’s character’s obsessive image-consciousness — she’s a local celebrity, a correspondent for the Philadelphia TV news affiliate — but quickly comes to seem like the thing keeping her from fracturing, the dream she needs to be allowed to live in to avoid reality breaking her entirely. Meanwhile, bad things start happening to Sean. Servant is presented from Sean’s perspective, and it follows his inactive lead. ', While many genres lend themselves as well to television as film, horror has generally seemed better suited to the big screen. “Here’s a candy bar,” she says to Buster, offering it to him and then taking it away. This notion proved unfortunately correct.). The end of the season is designed to make viewers intrigued by what happens next, but it mainly left me exasperated that so much had been promised and so little delivered. Horror on episodic TV is difficult to pull off for one big reason: Pacing. Ultimately, though, Servant is too empty to be worth the time, in spite of the performances and the great atmosphere. How will the Turners introduce this baby to others, having supposedly lost theirs? As for Dorothy, a well-known local news reporter, she breezes in and out of the house every day, doting on her son and Leanne, and aiming cutting remarks at her husband. We want to hear from you! It requires complications — less the sort of single twist for which Shyamalan became known early in his career with films like “The Sixth Sense” and “The Village” than a passel of reversals and reveals — in order to explain why Sean remains on board with the pretense that Jericho is alive, especially after developments arise that suggest Leanne may be a kidnapper or worse. We counted three “titty meat” references. This review contains spoilers for Servant. But so little happens in Servant past the first episode that it becomes hard to not dwell on Sean’s inability to call in the police, a medical professional, and/or Doctor Strange to figure out what’s up. And to get to a new understanding of Dorothy, one has to trudge fairly deep into the series’s run, long after some viewers may have written her off. Characters say ominous things — as Dorothy watches her husband cook, she notes, “Eels, they don’t realize when they’re dead” — that seem like they’re going somewhere dark, but then nothing comes of them. 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The premise, involving a couple (Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell) who, after the loss of their baby son Jericho, pretend he’s still alive. A conflict-averse episode centers on the revelation of a long-held secret that doesn’t have any consequences. Long after I’d lost patience with the rest of the show, Grint — and the occasional gonzo guest appearance by character actor Boris McGiver as Leanne’s extremely wet uncle — helped justify the decision to keep watching. Sean is the protagonist; Dorothy often comes across as the obstacle in his path, or another riddle to be solved. Family, magic, and sacrifice are redefined in a packed, fitfully brilliant final hour. Silly but watchable could be Apple TV+’s brand. There’s also the issue of suspension of disbelief: If the spell of the story is broken each time an episode ends, it can be hard to re-immerse. Join Stephen Colbert for His Live Election Night Special on Showtime, Brian Wilson As Surprised As You Are Beach Boys Playing That Trump Fundraiser, “We have absolutely nothing to do with the Trump benefit today in Newport Beach. Servant pays such close attention to details like this that it makes them seem like important clues to understanding whatever is going on here. And yet I kept watching, and not necessarily because I had to for work. The set-up phase is where Servant is at its strongest. Episodes are released weekly after that. That’s what Servant does and, I fear, more shows will do even less elegantly. Adele Hosting ‘Saturday Night Live’ Next Week With Musical Guest H.E.R. Servant is essentially a Black Mirror installment stretched into ten half-hour parts. Apple TV, M. Night Shyamalan. Apple TV+ Shows ‘Servant’ review: A deliciously creepy thriller that creeps along It’s not clear if ’Servant’ can sustain its frights, but this is still one of Shyamalan’s best productions in years. *Sorry, there was a problem signing you up. I’m withholding it. Spoiler alert: Most of them are not! That last point, at least, is not a problem for “Servant,” a new horror series executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. Privately, Sean tells Leanne to play along with the situation. Suffice it to say that all is not well between Dorothy and Sean, and their new nanny Leanne (Nell Tiger Free) is also not quite what she appears. Frequent screechy violins on the soundtracks? You\'ll receive the next newsletter in your inbox. And Sean… mostly goes back to cooking. Nell Tiger Free plays her as just the right mix of otherworldly and simply eccentric, but there’s not enough substance to Leanne to carry the season. In theory, Servant is about a grieving couple named Dorothy (Lauren Ambrose) and Sean (Toby Kebbell) in Philadelphia, who lost their newborn baby, bought a … Apple TV+’s new horror series Servant was produced and occasionally directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who knows a bit about casting a disturbing spell over an audience for two hours at a time. Alan Sepinwall's review Slow pans that pause to reveal a truly unexpected, shocking image? (A few episodes in, I stopped keeping track of all the things that seemed like they would be examples of Chekhov’s Gun theory, because it became clear none of these guns would ever be fired. Sean also has an extensive wine collection, and he and Julian drink generously from it at all hours of the day. It doesn’t help that Sean is the least compelling of the four central characters, a mope who is dealing with trauma himself but never seems particularly sympathetic. Ambrose can play a wide range of emotions and tones, but the story backs Dorothy into a corner early on that doesn’t allow her to showcase that versatility. And the arrival of Rupert Grint as Dorothy’s smug, dilettante brother Julian adds the perfect black-comic flavor to the strange doings between the Turners and Leanne. As the back halves of most “American Horror Story” seasons tend to prove, keeping up a tone of dread over hours and hours of running time is a challenge, and coming up with compelling reasons for the story to keep going is harder still. Grint is ultraintense and occasionally crude; if he’s still trying to shake off Ron Weasley, it makes total sense that he would seek out a part like this. If you want to go into the experience completely cold, read no further. The devotion to twists and reversals also winds up doing more harm than good in a long-form series like this. Yep, it’s got some of those. The problem is that it doesn’t have nearly enough story to fill 10 episodes, which means that all that spare atmosphere gets used up well before its five-plus-hour running time is over. “No. It’s the kind of thing that should make it impossible for him to do anything all day, every day, except try to find out exactly what has taken place, how, why, and whether there’s a way to undo it. In an effectively jarring scene, Sean goes to his son in the middle of the night, picks up the baby by his ankle, and lifts him out of his crib, smacking the child’s head on the rail as he does so. There will of course be twists, and Servant offers several in its first episode alone. 'Servant' Review for Apple TV+: A superb atmospheric thriller that's a joy to watch Apple TV+ has dipped its toe into the thriller/horror genre with Servant, and while it isn't completely flawless, it has kept me wanting more through the first three episodes. An episode that feels like a tipping point delivers the first high-level casualty of the Fadda-Cannon conflict. Servant wants to unsettle you and pulls out all the stops necessary to keep viewers off-balance. ‘Lovecraft Country’ Finale Recap: Spells and Prayers and Potions, Oh My! In order to tend to the (discomfitingly weird-looking) baby doll they’re raising as a son, Ambrose’s Dorothy and Kebbell’s Sean hire a nanny named Leanne (Nell Tiger Free), a young woman whose extreme obedience and recessiveness lend the show its title and its air of menace disguised as benevolence. Ambrose, a welcome presence underseen on big-ticket television since the “Six Feet Under” finale in 2005, makes big and risky choices in constructing her character. And despite its shortcomings, we keep going because we want a bite of that chocolate. © Copyright 2020 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media, LLC. The horror genre all but demands that people behave in ways that seem illogical or self-destructive just to keep the story going. Before the first episode ends, though, it appears that won’t be necessary: Somehow the living, breathing Jericho is back and Dorothy, who has been pretending the doll is real, doesn’t seem to notice the difference. ‘Fargo’ Recap: Rules Are Made to Be Broken. So does Campbell’s tomato soup, which Leanne consumes daily, fastidiously placing cans of it side by side in the kitchen cabinet. Variety and the Flying V logos are trademarks of Variety Media, LLC. As she settles in as the new au pair, it doesn’t take long to learn that something is not quite right in this house.
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