Lovecraft Country
2020 • Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi & Fantasy • JioHotstar (HBO)
Director: Misha Green
Cast: Jonathan Majors, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Wunmi Mosaku, Abbey Lee, Michael Kenneth Williams
🎯 Verdict
✍️ Full Review
Sci-Fi Horror Miniseries · 10 Episodes · Rating 3/5 — Unwieldy and stretched thin, but the last four episodes turn it into a tour de force.
An unwieldy sci-fi horror has a lot on its plate despite all the right ingredients and takes its sweet time to become a tour de force in the last four episodes. If anything there ever is even remotely close to the tv show Watchman, this might be it.
In Lovecraft Country, the creatures aren’t the real monsters and intersectionality is the magic sword. For a minute there, I thought this miniseries was actually going somewhere and there is no doubt, it tries hard to achieve that. The problem is it tries a little too hard. Hence, all the subtlety about race relations, identity, the self, interiority, sexuality, ideology, personal freedom and civil rights aspects of the message get stepped over by forcing them into the narrative and storytelling instead of inserting them thematically into a well-designed plot. As it progressed, by the time it was halfway, it already started to feel exhausting due to its too elaborately detailed and spread out script but it attempted to course correct in the last four episodes by cranking it up. It’s a lot, and not just because of the creative choices rather also because of the barbaric history it shows. The pain, the agony, the unfairness of it.
Almost all the performers did their parts except Jonathan Majors who overdid his part a bit by putting too much of his weight leaning into and maybe that’s commensurable as per the mystical and fantastical or magical realism nature of the show. But, one thing is clear which is if Lovecraft was alive today, he would be furious to watch his name and his creation being used as instrumentalization for something he vehemently opposed and boy, that would have been gratifying to witness. Alas, Lovecraft has long gone and Lovecraft Country makes it a point to highlight the old “Art vs Artist” debate. It rejuvenates and reinvents his cosmic horror elements but weaves those into the 50s socio-cultural settings and even goes across the pond. For sure, it stands firm face to face against the belief system held by its eponymous dignitary but it also puts a somewhat courageous fight by integrating longstanding issues that are still to some degree very much contemporary while trying to keep the genre intact.
It could have been way better. It’s stretched pretty thin with overly long episodes and if not for the later parts, it would’ve been a dud. The acting is really overdone for some characters. Some episodes hit right, some don’t. Yet, there are multiple points to be appreciative of. The whole of the playlist and track selection was awesome. The props from 50s, the comic book references as well as tributes to famous authors like- Alexandre Dumas, James Baldwin, William Hope Hodgson, Clarke Ashton Smith etc and many other real life speeches in the form of voiceovers were all spot on. The ninth episode in particular is one of the greatest episodes I have ever seen in television history.