The Third Day (2020)
6/10
structure, structure, structure
11 December 2020
Troubled Sam (Jude Law) sees a girl hanging herself. He rescues her and she directs him to her home, Osea Island with a causeway connected to the mainland only at low tide. The Martins (Paddy Considine, Emily Watson) run the tavern. Sam is thrown together with Jess (Katherine Waterston) and the island becomes more inescapable. The surrealism culminates in craziness at the end of episode 3. In episode four, new protagonist Helen (Naomie Harris) arrives on the island with daughters Ellie and Talulah.

This mini-series has mix of Midsommar and Get Out. Its problems may lie in its structure. The first three episodes is the Midsommar. It's interesting but episodes 2 and 3 surrealism gets repetitive. It's an 90 minutes movie stretched into a 3 hours TV show. The fourth episode comes in with a new freshness that hints at Get Out. The other structural issue is that almost all the exposition happens in the last episode. It may be meant as a reveal but some of the information needs to be presented earlier in the show. Quite frankly, it's not until the 'making of' section that I finally understand this community. The structure forces the audience to stumble in the dark for too long. The splitting of the show could work but the first part needs to be condensed. I like the first episode and I love the fourth episode. The second half is good but that may be due to finally getting answers. There are no easy fixes here and the structure is interesting in some respects but the problems it creates are problematic.
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