4 years ago
A school bus full of kiddies, including a girl called
Camille, falls off a mountainous road.
Present Day
Camille climbs her way out of the ravine and walks back
to the town (which is in the middle of the mountains of the Pacific Northwest).
As she walks home, a power cut shuts off the town
In town a group of people are meeting and a woman called
Chris tells everyone that she and Matthew are having a baby and how the group
has helped them keep going after their loss. Everyone is totally happy about
this news (or really good at faking socially appropriate joy). Except for the
grumpy guy, Jack, in the corner.
In the darkness, a woman (Claire) lights candles around
pictures of Camille, it looks like a shrine. The peculiar power outage hardly
lasts and back at the meeting Jack snarks at proposals for a (admittedly kind
of ugly) monument commemorating 32 dead children – the kids who died in the bus
crash. He seems to make a habit of being the grouchy one in the corner and he’s
not the most popular
Camille goes home and starts making lots of sandwiches,
much to the visible shock of Claire. She tries to recover rather than just
staring poleaxed
On to the local bar where Camille’s sister Lena is doing
shots and, in the back room, Jack gets dressed after clearly having sex with
another woman. She’s fighting her husband for legal custody and Jack is giving
her money. They’re interrupted when Claire calls and asks Jack to come to her
house, sounding a little shaky to say the least.
Claire is still shellshocked around Camille, her daughter
and hastily pulls apart her shrine. Jack comes over and joins the shellshock
when he realises Camille is there – even opening the bathroom door in shock.
Claire quickly fills Jack in that Camille remembers nothing – not the bus crash
or the other kids dying.
Jack and Claire are joined by Peter who runs the support
group and is a psychologist (Peter and Jack exchange angry eyes and if they
attacked each other with antlers it couldn’t be clearer that Claire is the
point of contention between them). Upon seeing Camille, he gets the same
shell-shocked look. He gives Camille a super supportive speech about accepting
what happened and being there to help her, which would be great if she actually
knew what happened.
Jack manages to break out of his shock enough to call and
leave a message with Lucy, before snarking nastily at Peter because being angry
with Peter is much easier than processing one’s child returning from the dead.
Jack goes to Lucy demanding to have sex so he can talk to
Camille. Yes Lucy is a sex medium. Lucy protests that she’s tired but he pushes
her against the wall anyway and they have sex/séance with Lucy clearly making
stuff up. Jack is enraged that she has
been conning him as he becomes more threatening she hits him and runs from the
bar.
As she walks through a dark tunnel a figure in a hoody crosses her path – and stabs her repeatedly. He lowers her to the ground and she appears to be dead.
Onwards – Dr. Julie Han drives home from a shopping trip
late at night and spots a young boy, alone, at a bus stop. When she stops to
check on him he disappears. When she goes to her flat though, he follows her,
staring through the window like every horror movie child ever. When she tries
to talk to him he’s just silent. She brings him home, watched by her very very
nosy neighbour Annie – to put her off, Julie gives the boy the name Victor.
Despite not saying a word, the boy still manages to guilt eyes her into letting
him stay the night. Before she finally makes him go to sleep she asks him to
tell her his real name – and he says it’s Victor.
We follow another woman looking slightly confused (and
not dressed warmly enough) as she goes home where there’s an old man asleep.
She gets into bed beside him and he wakes up – and it’s shellshocked time
again. He calls Julie, the doctor, but can’t think what to say and hangs up on
her.
He goes out and walks to the top of the dam. He jumps
off.
Next character! Simon, a young man, goes to the bar where
Lena is drinking. There he asks to see a Rowan who works there as a waitress –
but the barmaid has never heard of her. Lena steps in to show the very
attractive Simon where Rowan lives. On the way they both talk about being
regulars at the bar, but never having seen each other there. Added info is that
Simon was born in town and Lena was tutored by Rowan.
Rowan is trying on wedding veil when she sees him in the
window – shellshocked look time, though hers is more horror than shock. Simon
hammers on the door, demanding she let him in while she screams “no” and bangs
back, screaming at him to go away hysterically until her daughter checks on her
and she calms down to reassure the little girl. Simon leaves.
Sherriff Thomas comes home later – he lives with Rowan –
to reassure her when she tearfully tells him “it’s happening again.” It being
“Simon stuff.”
Lena goes home and it’s her turn to be shellshocked over
Camille – only now Camille is intearful shock as well, since 4 years changes
her teenaged sister Lena far more than her parents.
To emphasise this we go back in time 4 years on the day of the bus trip (which Lena, Camille’s twin
sister, avoided because she was sick) to when Claire and Jack were still
together. Once Camille goes, Lena stops pretending to be sick and invites over
a boy who she makes out with – a boy Lena and Camille both like. While Camille
is on the bus that crashes, Lena is having sex (which Camille feels because
twin powers?) She panics on the bus and yells to be let out.
Her noise distracts the driver so he doesn’t see the boy
in the road – Victor – until it’s too late; he swerves off the road to avoid
him, causing the crash.
This is the American re-make of a French series we’vealso covered. It promises to be very faithful to that series in terms of plot - but I'm not sure it manages it with the tension and atmosphere that so characterised the French show. The music, the lighting, the setting, the whole sense of the show doesn't have the same impact. It DOES have a lot of atmosphere, a lot of personal stories, as lot of excellent acting and
emotion, a lot of creepiness but I don't think it's on the same level. It's trying and if I hadn't seen the original I think I'd be more impressed - but it feels like a ale ciopy.
Unfortunately, we also have the vast number
of characters that were rather overwhelming in the first episode of the French
version as well. These are a huge number of characters to digest so quickly.
The characterisations are also very similar – Camille
blasé confidence, Jack’s pain, Simon’s intensity; perhaps Victor isn’t quite as
creepy and Julie isn’t quite as haunted. They also do have a strong cast of characters and the overall quality is good... but, and I feel I'm going to say this a lot, the French one was better. This comparison is inevital because it’s almost a direct copy of the French version – which means it's always going to be seen through that lens. I think the acting comes close or equal but the setting just doesn't carry it as well
And I have to emphasise that it is a direct copy. This is virtually the same episode with almost no differences from the
original. Even the names are almost the same. Almost which kind of touches on
my not-all-that-enthralledness. This show is so similar to its French
counterpart that I want to ask what the point is? If it’s going to stick so
close to the original, to an extent that far eclipses shows like Being Human’s
American remake, why not just watch the French one? I’m discomforted that the
answer may simply be “because subtitles” or “because it’s set in France”.
Something which feels all the more likely when characters like Camille and
Julie and Claire keep the same name – but Jérôme becomes Jack, Pierre becomes
Peter, Sandrine becomes Christine, Adèle becomes Rowan. Any name that is “too
French” is anglicised (or Americanised rather).
One thing they have changed is racial diversity on the
show. Julie is Asian which she wasn’t in the French version and a lot of the background characters (like
Pilar the shop assistant and Matthew one of the grieving parents) are POC. This
promises at least one positive change in the series
I don’t like anything about Lucy’s depiction. I don’t see
why a medium conning a grieving father has to have sex to do it (is the sex a
way to convince us why the cynical Jack fell for it? Is the sex supposed to be
telling us that Jack doesn’t fall for it but is just trying to rationalise
visiting a sex worker?). Because the sex is unnecessarily brought into it, we
also have the scene with highly dubious consent (Lucy initially says no and
never really turns it into as clear yes) and her subsequent attack plays very
much on the sex-worker-as-victim trope AND punishing a woman for being sexual.
It’s a whole lot of fail in one characterisation
