I'll believe you if you tell me that you enjoyed the artistic flourishes that Alex Garland sprinkles throughout this mini-series, but for me it bloated a decent two hour film into an eight hour experience that I nearly gave up on so many times.
The story revolves around Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) whose boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman) apparently commits suicide following his first day working in the secretive Devs department of the tech company they both work for. With the help of her ex-boyfriend Jamie (Jin Ha) Lily tries to uncover the truth about what happened to Sergei and what happens in the highly funded secret department.
There's lots of this show that I liked. Really liked. Sonoya Mizuno is great, as is Jin Ha. Nick Offerman adds a lot as the leader of the tech firm whose interest has focused on the DEVS department since the death of his wife and daughter. The performance is very vulnerable, which is different from the roles that he is more commonly associated with. I liked the bones of the story too, even the conclusion that I can imagine would have lost some people with its "what is life really" philosophical ending, but I quite appreciated that.
But as I say, my issue was that there's maybe two hours of material in this that's worthwhile and it's padded by lots of slow motion establishing shots of San Francisco, or the woods around the campus. I also hated the musical choices, mostly ambient style electronica that sits over these many and various establishing shots. There are aspects of the story that could have been cut without too much of a loss. Did we need to spend so much time on the Russian Conspiracy aspect? Or with the other members of the DEVS team? I feel like rather than giving Garland the chance to tell the story properly, the extra time was just space that needed to be filled and so filled, and stretched it was, but to its own detriment.
The story revolves around Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) whose boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman) apparently commits suicide following his first day working in the secretive Devs department of the tech company they both work for. With the help of her ex-boyfriend Jamie (Jin Ha) Lily tries to uncover the truth about what happened to Sergei and what happens in the highly funded secret department.
There's lots of this show that I liked. Really liked. Sonoya Mizuno is great, as is Jin Ha. Nick Offerman adds a lot as the leader of the tech firm whose interest has focused on the DEVS department since the death of his wife and daughter. The performance is very vulnerable, which is different from the roles that he is more commonly associated with. I liked the bones of the story too, even the conclusion that I can imagine would have lost some people with its "what is life really" philosophical ending, but I quite appreciated that.
But as I say, my issue was that there's maybe two hours of material in this that's worthwhile and it's padded by lots of slow motion establishing shots of San Francisco, or the woods around the campus. I also hated the musical choices, mostly ambient style electronica that sits over these many and various establishing shots. There are aspects of the story that could have been cut without too much of a loss. Did we need to spend so much time on the Russian Conspiracy aspect? Or with the other members of the DEVS team? I feel like rather than giving Garland the chance to tell the story properly, the extra time was just space that needed to be filled and so filled, and stretched it was, but to its own detriment.