To paraphrase 20th Century French theorist Roland Barthes, the moment we take a picture of something, it is already dead. Similarly, early cinema writer (and fellow Frenchman) Andre Bazin, thought that new technology evoked what he called the “mummy complex” — humankind’s urge to look to its past, to preserve these memories in amber, and to review them from a future moment. Fast-forwarding to the 21st century, with the proliferation of all manner of video and streaming technologies, it should come as no surprise to us that we’re perpetually nostalgic for these old, obsolete technologies, even if we didn’t experience them ourselves. Perhaps it’s because we’re looking for a moment when things were still real, when music was on vinyl, and when images were still captured on physical, fragile, magnetic tape.
The massive popularity of the “found footage genre”— with its emphasis on crappy, rather than high-quality images— seems to hold some of the answers to these massive questions, and it is the relationship between the past and the present, the real and the imagined, and our preservation of a past as an object that is continually buried with new information that is at the core of Netflix’s new horror series, “Archive 81.”
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“Archive 81” adapts the serial podcast of the same name. In that series, and in this one, film archivist Dan Turner (Mamadou Athie) is hired by Virgil, the head of a mysterious multinational organization to repair, restore and log a series of Hi8 tapes from the 1990s named Archive 81. Dan gets swept away to a remote facility for his task restoring graduate student Melody Pendras’ (Dina Shihabi) oral history project. So Dan watches Melody’s journey to investigate the mysterious happenings in a downtown apartment building. Like other famous horror apartment buildings (a la “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Inferno,” “Candyman” or “The Lords of Salem”), the structure is one of those cursed, mysterious places — built on the bones of a mansion which burned down in the 1920s. Soon after arriving, Dan notes the strange coincidental connections between Melody’s project and his own history, and the first episode ends with a justified “what the fuck?!” From here, Dan falls down rabbit hole after rabbit hole, bumping into witches, parallel timelines, cults, creepy paintings, mysterious magical items, conspiracy plots, and, of course, the ubiquitous, terrifying presence of TV static.
Turner’s profession allows for viewers to fetishize old recording technologies —from Hi-8 videotapes, to 8mm and 16mm prints, to equipment as obscure as the Fisher-Price PIXL 2000 camera. (The care that the creative team takes demonstrating his slow serious restoration work, is easily one of the highlights of the series, and the first episode bears rewatching for this reason alone.) Of course, the presence of these outdated technologies immediately begs comparison to other found footage films, and the series pays homage to and builds upon, influences as wide-ranging as “Ringu,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “Videodrome,” “Poltergeist,” “Lost Highway” along with others. Given these influences, the mere sight of static may be enough for viewers to watch the series with all of their lights on, if not unplug their TVs entirely.
“Archive 81” is a strong entry in the increasingly-crowded mystery/horror TV spaces. It is similar to Showtime’s “Yellow Jackets” in that both contain slow-burn mysteries, without being too scary for horror newbies. The show contains enough Easter eggs and references to canonical horror to satisfy connoisseurs — ranging from the iconic red coat from “Don’t Look Now” to the overhead driving shots of “The Shining” to its obvious connection “Rosemary’s Baby,” all the while evoking Philip Glass’ “Candyman” score. “Archive 81” comes ready-made for discussion, debate, and dissection in the usual online spaces. “Archive 81” lovingly evokes its TV predecessors like “LOST,” “Twin Peaks,” “The X-Files,” and “Fringe” while offering something innovative to TV horror. Since it sells itself as a “found footage” series, this designation alone sets some audience expectations, while introducing new viewers to the form.
From “LOST,” the “Archive 81” seems to have borrowed its labyrinthine narrative structure, and from “Twin Peaks” (and other Lynch works) the moody drone of its soundtrack and floating camera suggests that there is something always lurking just outside of the frame. “Archive 81” pushes these standard horror tropes further by exploring the relationship between Dan’s traumatic past, his obsessive relationship with his craft, and his need to peer deeper into the seemingly endless pile of these mysterious tapes. This is certainly the case for the first four episodes of the show.
The fourth episode, directed by the filmmaking duo of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, ends with one of the most memorable and creepy seances in recent memory. Unfortunately, like other Netflix series, the show loses momentum after this genuinely terrifying moment and nothing quite replicates this high. If anything, the series runs out of gas after the fifth episode, becoming more predictable, and ultimately less scary.
In terms of casting, there is nothing particularly wrong with the choices of Athie or Shihabi, but neither are they especially compelling. This may simply be a problem of adaptation. Given the eight hours, the audience is expected to stay with these characters, it’s surprising that Dan’s idiosyncrasies have been ironed out from the source material. In the podcast, Dan is constantly narrating what he is doing to his audience, so listeners have a better sense of the character’s emotions, motivations, and immediate reactions. In Netflix’s version, Dan is a more passive observer, standing in for the viewer’s POV. The result is that his character lacks the depth of his audio counterpart. Likewise, even though it is implied in the series, the facts of Melody’s gay relationship have been smoothed out as well. Other secondary characters, such as Julia Chan’s Annabelle or Martin Donovan’s Virgil, bring more energy when they are on screen, and thus the leads suffer by comparison to these other performers.
The show’s horror pedigree is impressive, with horror mainstay James Wan executive producing and veteran TV writer-producer Rebecca Sonnenshine (“The Vampire Diaries,” “The Boys”) acting as showrunner. Rebecca Thomas (“Stranger Things,” “Limetown”) capably sets the tone for the first and last two episodes, while Haifaa al-Mansour and Benson/Moorhead direct the rest. These latter directors —each of whom is known for their distinctive styles and voices—are tamped down, in what seems more of a director-for-hire gig. The tandem of Rebeccas do the bulk of the work adapting the series from the audio to the visual medium. Nonetheless, the story hews closely to its source material, down to the character names, plot points, and even the earnest podcaster friend Mark (Matt McGorry) who acts as a framing device for the podcast and asks, “Do you know what happened to my friend Dan?” at the end of each episode.
Despite these slight missteps, what the show lacks in the above categories is overcome by the mood that it evokes throughout. “Archive 81” is not especially bloody, nor does it contain many jump scares. It is the lack of these elements, and the thought that they could happen at any time, that the show excels at. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about “Archive 81” is in its reminding us that all the images that we record — no matter how terrible they may look — ultimately always tells a ghost story. That would explain the endurance of the found footage film, and our lingering interest in the distorted images that we screen on our high definition televisions. [B]
“Archive 81” is available now on Netflix.