3 out of 5

Created by: Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij

Thus far, a Brit Marling project – something she’s writing / co-writing – has been reliably… broad. With Mike Cahill, or, more frequently, Zal Batmanglij, spiritual / psychological musings have been lain atop of genre films or shows, using the wiggle room of fantasy or sci-fi to go hard on being “enigmatic.” I’m using language which rags on this, but I’ve been a fan: while I think Marling (as the common denominator of her co-conspirators) is representative of a type who has big thoughts but maybe not much to say, I’ve enjoyed her exploration of those thoughts in these formats. If you accept that it’s not going anywhere, the flirtation with whatever subject matter helps to bump whichever project into a realm that remains interesting and “intelligent” without being necessarily assumptive or (in reaching for conclusions) insulting. I don’t think that balance is wholly purposeful, it’s just been in the nature of Marling’s approach, and that’s worked for me.

The OA gave Brit and Batmanglij an opportunity to stretch out these tendencies across a couple of television seasons, and while that increased the quantity of indulgences, it also allowed more space to smooth out the same; so: lots of bullshit, but the wider pastures, and perhaps the bingey nature of the streaming model, fit really well together.

Now: A Murder at the End of the World. On a different streaming service – Hulu – which, in this instance, did weekly episode drops, and it’s also a limited series, at seven episodes. Much of the above still applies – the show is right in line with all else Marling has co-written, with the genre of choice this time being a murder mystery – but the writing has aged a bit: the affectations in characters that once were enigmatic now feel a bit cloying; the open-ended musings are coming across as technology-is-scary-y’all elder wisdom drops. The tech talk in the show is cringey, dropping lingo while also referring to every bad thing that happens as a hack, and all potential suspects as hackers, and pitching the show at an in-between demographic, with the majority of the cast skewing older except its lead. It is exactly like a script written by a teenager who thinks they’re privy to secrets the adults don’t understand; and then when you’re an adult, you realize – no, you were just another teenager. Extend that to the presentation in general.

Writer / hacker Darby (Emma Corrin) is an isolated kid and an isolated young adult, having stepped out of her shell exactly one time: when she went cross-country with Bill (Harris Dickinson), the two having met on amateur sleuth boards, and joining up to trace the unfound victims of an uncaught serial killer. This experience led to Darby writing a book about the trek, which would seem to be, currently, her only connection to the real world.

And then: tech guru Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) reaches out, inviting Darby to a meeting of the minds: the best of the best in their various fields of science, cinema, environmentalism, etcetera. How, then, does Darby fit into this? She can only figure it’s due to her tangential ties to Andy’s wife, famed but retired hacker Lee Andersen (Marling).

While we periodically flash back to the hunt detailed in Darby’s book, and track a forming relationship between her and Bill, in the present, Darby and this think tank are flown out to a snowbound “hotel,” a cutting-edge facility overseen by Andy’s AI, Ray (Edoardo Ballerini), and told that they’ll be working on, like, something. Y’know, something important. In typical Marling fashion, this vagueness is presented with some promising mystery, but also with a casualness that indicates we probably shouldn’t make much of it. I’ll let you decide if that’s a spoiler or not.

Eventually, the titular murder occurs in the present; the hotel goes on lockdown until police can arrive, but they’re blocked by a dump of snows – now everyone is stranded, and presumably alongside the murderer.

The show is slow to drip out clues, and most of them are, frankly, rather uninspired – smart people making automatic accusations based on flimsy evidence – but I appreciate that every red herring is shot down pretty immediately. Narratively, we’re double dealing as per the creators’ already stated M.O.’s: Darby, still trying to understand her role, proves value as the sleuth of the crew, scenes from her past informing tenuous logical leaps in the present, as she tries to suss out what happened with her relationship with Bill; what happened with herself, perhaps, and we can see this mirrored in funhouse ways in the rocky relationship between Andy, Lee and their son, Zoomer (Kellan Tetlow).

On each individual level, I think the show works. The modern day mystery uses the setting limitations and modern day tech for an intriguing (if, as mentioned, occasionally cringey) update on a locked room case; the past mystery is an interesting character study of Darby and Bill’s opposites-attract type intrigue, and how tragedy and adrenaline can make the highlight and undermine aspects of our personalities; and even the cross-era puzzling of how Darby got from there to here has merit – all of these also working on a theme of connection with self and others, and how technology helps and hinders. But, ironically, the connection between these layers is wholly clunky, and the Marling / Batmangli habit of stocking their stories with plenty of open ends is quite wrong for what’s mainly a mystery – characters and subplots that go nowhere feel more pointless than ponderous

Additionally, I just think this thing was cast wrong, which goes back to the weird demo it’s aiming for. While Corrin and Dickinson are likely not bad actors, the show wants to tap into a youthy aloofness through these characters, then drop them in a very serious story, but treat them like intelligentsia. Meanwhile, the script is trying to analyze the kind of distanced care of Darby and Bill’s generation, and also interrogating gender roles to a degree, and Corrin and Dickinson really just can’t carry all of that; it’s too clearly adults masquerading as teens, trying to update their trapper keepers into wearable tech, but getting away with dropping 80s and 90s tunes on the soundtrack, ’cause at least that’s “retro.” (No, actually, I found the music to be a very forced Stranger Things affect as well.)

This sounds wholly negative, but more accurately: the show is okay. I’m taking it to task as part of the Marling-verse, though I do sincerely feel the criticisms stand apart from that. I suppose I’m just grousing about it a bit more generously because… it’s disappointing. I’ve liked Marling’s stuff, even in its overreach. But this is the first co-written project of hers that felt like it played to its audience more than the creator’s / creators’ strengths.