Archive 81, a sort of high-concept paranormal thriller, is #2 on Netflix this week. It stars a cute guy, and there's no hetero-romance in the trailer, so let's take a look.
Scene 1: Flatiron Building, Manhattan. A street vendor is selling old VHS tapes. Dan (Mamoudou Athie), a regular customer, buys some. The vendor tells him that Jill stopped by earlier, and said hello. "You can still catch her, if you hurry." Gulp, the trailer was wrong. Hetero-romance in the third line of the friggin' series! Or maybe it's just to assure the audience that he's heterosexual.
Scene 2: Instead of rushing after the Girl of His Dreams, Dan visits another old tape dealer, sits by the Brooklyn Bridge looking depressed, and goes to work at the Museum of the Moving Image, where there's a package waiting for him: an old, heavily damaged movie reel! He carefully begins the job of reconstruction.
The reel shows a horror anthology series produced by William Crest in 1958, but never aired. Crest died tapes were destroyed.
Dan and his unnnamed female coworker know all about William Crest, but they tell each other about him, anyway: a famous actor in 1930s movies who dabbled in tv in the 1950s. His daughter Evie found a box of old, decaying tapes buried on his estate, and sent them to Dan to be restored.
After the plot dump, coworker gives Dan another package, this one from someone named Karen: "Please restore and digitize this tape for tomorrow morning."
Scene 3: At home, surrounded by old movies and a photo of a smiling family (dead wife?), Dan starts restoring Karen's tape. Wait -- why didn't he do it at work? It's from the 1990s: a girl talking to her best friend about her upcoming ethnography of the residents of the Visser Building in the East Village. In real life, that's a gay neighborhood, but I'll bet in this world it's heterosexual only.
Dan is intrigued. Is he falling in love with her? She'll be in her 50s now, if she wasn't sacrified by a weird cult. But maybe he'll travel back in time to save the Damsel in Distress.
He googles "The Visser Building," and finds a new story: it burned down, leaving 13 residents missing and assumed dead.
Scene 4: "Mystery Signals," a podcast about paranormal investigation, run by Mark Higgins (Matt McGorry, the hunky guard from Season 1 of Orange is the New Black, with about 20 pounds and a beard added). But who cares what he looks like? After Jill, Evie, the unnamed coworker, Karen, the 1990s girl, and her bestie, just hearing a masculine name is a welcome relief!
After the broadcast, Dan and Mark walk down the street, being chummy. Mark wants to hang out, but Dan blows him off; "I have an early day tomorrow." That's what you say to avoid spending the night. Maybe I can wrangle a gay subtext out of these guys.
Scene 5: At the museum the next day, Karen, who turns out to be the boss, explains why she needed the tape of the grad student restored: it's for a Big Shot donor. "He wants to thank you in person."
Cut to Dan entering the fantabulous office to shake hands with the Big Shot. He wants to hire Dan to restore a lot of tapes damaged in the fire at the Vissir Building. Strictly confidential. But they're so heavily damaged that you have to work in our research facility in the Catskills, which has no internet or cell phone access. Sounds like The Shining.
"We think you would be interested in finding out what happened to the 13 missing residents, because you lost your family in a fire."
Scene 6: Dan refuses the job and storms out. He calls Mark the Pocaster: "How the fuck would he know about the fire that killed my family? It's confidential! We kept it out of the papers!"
Flashback to the child Dan watching his house go up in flames, interspliced with a dog walking through the woods.
Dan awakens in the middle of the night (no beefcake) and looks at the Melody tape again. There's the dog! But it's the same dog he had as a kid. He's astonished. How is it possible? Um....because dogs of the same breed look alike?
Scene 7: Mark comes over to talk about the dog mystery. How could "a random, hot grad student," whom you didn't know, be photographed with your dog? They just had to throw in a heterosexual dig, didn't they? Can't I have a moment of gay subtext?
Also, Dan tried looking up Melody on the internet, and there's no record.
Mark asks pointedly: "Is this about Jill?" OMG, does every single statement have to be about being heterosexual?
Scene 8: Dan takes the job. Driving through a desolate, creepy woods while Big Shot says "Beautiful country, isn't it." More back story: Dan grew up in this area. And he's had a nervous breakdown (does that diagnosis exist anymore?).
Dan gets a tour of his dreary brutopian research facility, where someone with a history of mental illness will be all alone, with no internet or cell phone service, restoring tapes about people who died in a fire, like his family. What could possibly go wrong?
Dan goes to work, restoring the tapes. First up: Melody's first day at the Vissir Building.
Scene 9: Melody's timeline, 1994. She fills in the details about the Vissir: construction date uncertain, architect unknown, built on the ruins of a mansion that burned down in the 1920s (and an Indian burial ground?). John, the stern, snarling manager, shows her to her apartment (why does she have to stay there, just to conduct some interviews?). He refuses to introduce her to any of the residents.
That night, Melody hears weird chanting coming from the walls. She yells for them to knock it off -- it's late. Suddenly it gets very loud. Back in 2022, Dan has to turn off the recording; it's so loud it fries his equipment.
Scene 10: Melody knocks on doors to solicit interviews, but gets suspicious stares and grimaces. Finally, she meets 14-year old Jess, a girl who runs errands for the residents: walks dogs, gets newspapers, and so on (don't the residents ever leave? Are they like the ghosts in American Horror Story). Jess offers to introduce her to some residents.
Scene 11: First up: creepy bohemian Tamara Stefano, who is working on a weird esoteric opera. She plays some: it's the same chanting Melody heard last night! But this time it makes her sick; she collapses.
Back in 2022, Dan calls Mark on the landline and asks him to google Tamara Stefano. He realizes that the phone line is being tapped, so he hangs up and goes outside to look for cell phone reception. He reaches a high fence. Nothing. Is he not allowed to leave? Drive into town for dinner and a movie? Maybe meet someone to hook up with?
Scene 12: Dan unpacking in his horrible brutopian living quarters. While browsing among the dog-eared paperbacks in the library, he finds a diary! Whoops, no, it's a handwritten novel, apparently not important. Dan puts it back and selects an old movie instead.
Scene 13: Back in 1994, Melody interviews Jess (she's 14! You can't interview her without her parents' permission!). Jess tells her that the Visser draws people in, and won't let you leave. "Wait -- did Samuel send you?" she asks. Who's Samuel?
Spoiler alert: He's a hot but evil occultist played by Evan Jonigkeit, whom Melody will fall in love with.
Suddenly Jess has an epileptic fit. Back in 2022, the tape gets distorted, and then a snarling face appears!
Dan runs outside, looking for a cell phone signal. Finally he finds enough bars to get through to Mark, back home: "This place is screwing with my head." At least there's no kid saying "redrum."
Mark's intel: there was never a composer or musician of any sort named Tamara Stefano. So, she died before she had time to make a name for herself.
Flashback to the young Dan playing a song on the piano that outrages his father. It's probably the same song Tamara Stefano composed. He orders Dan to stop, so Dan decides to take the dog for a walk instead. It's a very long walk -- afternoon when they set out, evening when they return, and the house is burning down.
Scene 14: He puts in the Jess tape again, but this time it plays perfectly. Jess recovers, and explains that this happens occasionally. Her Mom has brought her to doctors and priests, but no one can explain why.
Who's Samuel? Melody wants to know.
Jess explains that he is from an alternate world.
Next tape: Melody moaning that they took Jess. She confronts the apartment manager: "What did you do with her?" Several other guys in uniforms approach and grab her. One of them is Dan's father!
The end.
Beefcake: None.
Gay Characters: Absolutely none.
Heterosexism: Incessant, which is quite a feat, considering that no one is shown actually engaging in heterosexual romance in this episode. Just constant references. "I'm heterosexual. Are you heterosexual? I'm heterosexual. Isn't being heterosexual great? Don't you wish everybody was heterosexual? Wait -- in this world, everybody is! So why do we have to constantly bring it up?"
Evil Building: The Visser draws you in, and then "you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave."
Postscript: I just found out that this ferplunginen series is based on a podcast, in which Melody HAS. A. WIFE. Who plays an essential role in the plot, but does not exist in the tv series. And Melody has been de-gayed. Of all the dirty, low-down, underhanded, homophobic tricks.
My Grade: If I could storm out of the theater, I would.
The first episode is really good but then the series looses steam- it probably would have been better as movie-I do wish that Dan and Mark would have been gay- at least we would have one hot sex scene- there are hints of lesbianism in some later characters but no sex at all- I found the girl playing Melody annoying after a while so not sure why Dan was so obsessed with her- chunky Dan was sexier- I did like the use of old technology but the ending just left me cold
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