Seduced by the intensity of the first episodes of Yellowjacketsthe screens team of the Duty had dared to reserve a place for him in his annual list, anticipating a final to match. Here is the “gore red and dark black” series, which focuses on the tortured fate of young soccer players forced to survive in the wilderness after a plane crash, comes to us in French. And our intuition was right: the entire season, which alternates over two temporalities, from the horror of yesterday, in 1996, to the remorse of today, is worth the detour.
Yes, there is Lost and His Majesty flies in the well-packed survivalist portion. There is also a vitriolic portrait of the bitterness and wickedness of female adolescence and its frenzied competitiveness. The young cast is brilliant, including Quebecer Sophie Nélisse in a deceptively understated, eminently complex role. She’s perfectly in tune with the more mature cast, led by actresses Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci and Melanie Lynskey. In the skin of the survivors, they face, 25 years later, demons never completely asleep.
The game of correspondences between the distributions is fascinating. We think of Dark, alternate realities and less time loops. The narrative engine of this psychological horror thriller by Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson feeds instead on the darkness induced by competition and fear. And even if their vision is based on archetypes, it is carried out with so much panache and nerve that we forgive them this shortcut.
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