Emma Corrin Shines in ‘A Murder at the End of the World,’ an Ambitious Web of Intrigue From ‘The OA’ Creators: TV Review
13.11.2023 - 20:25
/ variety.com
Aramide Tinubu We are at a place where humanity exists between two spheres. The “real world” is our tangible environment. We can touch things, unpacking textures, tastes and scents.
And then, there is another world. Though artificial, and born of the internet and technology, AI is more life-like than ever. Innovation, after all, is infinite.
While many of us glide between both sectors, Gen Z and the Alpha generation are coming of age, having only ever been interconnected and heavily online. For better or for worse, this way of living will affect human beings until it all goes dark. For Darby Hart (a captivating Emma Corrin), the character at the center of creators/directors Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij‘s ominous but wholly fascinating “A Murder at the End of the World,” tech and the internet are lifelines.
Raised by her single father, a coroner in the tiny town of Lost Nation, Iowa and abandoned by her mother at a young age, Darby has always been interested in the darker aspects of humankind. Shadowing her father at crime scenes and examining bones and dead bodies, mostly of young Jane Does, fuels Darby’s preoccupation with the dead. From her adolescence, she has tried to learn about these women and what happened to them.
A skilled hacker and investigator, Darby scours the web for clues. Her online adventures inadvertently connect her to Bill Farrah (Harris Dickinson), a fellow coder who is becoming increasingly disillusioned by the internet. Drawn together by a case and a brewing chemistry, the pair spend the better part of 2016 tracking a serial killer—a grisly figure whose calling card is the silver jewelry found near his victims.