Ugh... Wtf!?!? Solid first episode, I'm hooked! Great casting/acting so far. This gonna be a weird one yall.
Going by the first episode this has all the potential of being better than the book... and the book is damn great.
[7.5/10] A very nice opening to the new show. I have to admit, with HBO and some big names attached, I was expecting a prestige-y, heady take on the Cthulhu mythos mixed with racial injustice premise. Instead, Lovecraft Country is delightfully pulpy. It isn’t especially deep so far, but that’s no strike against it. The characters are well-drawn, even if they play on various archetypes, the set pieces are exciting, and there’s plenty of tense moments to accent the horror elements.
The notion of a young veteran, his uncle, and his childhood friend traveling from Chicago to New England to find his missing father is a good story engine. The show drops all kinds of interesting loose threads it’ll likely pick up later, from Tic’s strained relationship with his dad, Leti’s strained relationship with her siblings and her activism, and Uncle George’s warm and loving relationship with his wife and daughter, made all the more endearing by comparison to the younger members of his traveling party.
There’s a lot of straight up exposition here, where some thudding dialogue lets the audience know exactly what’s happening or what a character’s supposed to be without much subtlety. But it works for the pulpy vibe the show’s going for.
“Sundown” also does a good job in the early going of blending the supernatural fear of Eldritch Abominations emerging from behind the shadows with the real life fear of racist locals and law enforcement harassing and even killing our protagonists. The sequence where the main trio have to race away from a detour after they realize what the locals did to the last black woman who crossed into that town is frightening as hell.
Likewise, the group’s encounter with a racist local sheriff is utterly terrifying and angering. The emotional ups and downs of their race to get out of the county by sundown, making it past the county line only to realize they’ve been trapped anway, are superb and distressing.
But from there, the episode escalates into a crazy combination of Jurassic Park and Night of the Living dead, with the Lovecraftian monsters saving them (wittingly or unwittingly) from the bigoted local police force, until they race to head off these “vampire”-type creatures with the checklist-approved flares. There’s a lot of heart-pumping moments through all this, and while it’s all high volume, it works as four-color action.
It’s a good mission statement for the show, setting up the mystery, showing what our heroes are up against both in terms of racism and elder gods, and pointing to the main characters’ capabilities, vulnerabilities, and enjoyable dynamic with one another. Very interested to see what else the show has in store from here.
Powerful stuff. The cast is marvelous.
Excellent acting, top notch production values, lots of action, and a truly chilling setting in Jim Crow America finds Lovecraft Country starting off with a bang! Promising to be exciting and lots of fun, while also critically engaging with the more problematic aspects of Lovecraft's legacy.
Only one production misstep and a couple of changes from the book were enough to give pause but, overall, "Sundown" is very nearly perfect... i'm even more excited for this series now, and i've been waiting for it to drop for 6 months!
you can read my full, slightly spoilerific review, on Forestpunk: https://forestpunk.wordpress.com/2020/08/17/lovecraft-country-s01-e01-tv-review-sundown/
Good start. I wasn't really interested until the sheriff appeared. Hope this keeps momentum.
Seventy years later not much has changed. White privilege...check. Police violence against blacks...check. Monsters...well there is an orange one in DC....so check.
Finally, a show about lovecraft. The first episode was fantastic, the artistic direction was great. It looks like the horror aspect is a little campier than I anticipated, but by the end of the episode I really enjoyed what all it had to offer.
Excited to see where it goes from here!
UH OK more please.
Reclamation of old, racist writing. Excellent.
50 minutes in still wondering why that is called after Lovecraft. Then finally something happens. Was definitely expecting something much different.
After that very first scene, I thought they were gonna pull a bait and switch, and just give us a regular show full of boring "visions" or whatnot ... so very glad I was wrong.
Wasn't eager to start this after having seen all the fake shilling on it's IMDb page (most of which - including the negative ones - has now been removed ???) and am actually still unsure about this 70 minutes later. I can't say that I'm not intrigued but found the change of pace towards the end rather unexpected for something branding itself with Lovecraft (I mean it's at least there in the creature design).
I don't feel like I'm necessarily in competent hands because this had very little substance so far. I'm going to be very cynical about what I've seen: Yes, racism bad (queue examples), black culture so rich (queue overlong concert scene AND play modern day trap music), car chases are exciting (let's do two of them with the first one resulting in a quite illogical conclusion which everyone ignores) and let's not forget we are here for some monsters (which came with the usual horror logic trappings)... Having now looked at the trailer I know even less of it's intended direction - just that this is certainly not the 10:star: material some have people claimed this as :person_bowing:.
Oh.....this is fucking amazing. I’m beyond excited.
This episode started off crazy first couple of minutes then ended Crazy. It was slow for a little bit then got better, if the rest of the season is like this expect it to be nominated for a few awards. Show make you think one thing is the villian but shows you what the real villian is at the end felt like a movie. 10 stars
DELETE COMMENT DELETE COMMENT DELETE COMMENT
It was ok... some part of the music I didn’t connect... but will watch the next one.. love lovecraft
8/10
For me, this was a great season premiere. The story feels normal at first and then they introduce the paranormal.
Gorgeously directed. A smart, sweeping adaptation of the first section of the novel, with a deeper, more emotional tone than the book. Fantastic cast. There's some clunky exposition, but great use of transitions and setting the stages of the road trip. When it goes full monster movie, it goes all in without losing the tension of the themes it's exploring. I love how lushly it paints the world, from the block party, to the hidden menaces of unwelcome towns, to a couple enjoying their morning in the sunlight, to the fantastical opening of the war smashing into the pop culture Tick still clings to.
If you think about the racism and violence against the poc this could also be a show in the present, so sad 70 years later we still have to deal with all this shit. I really like the blend of social drama and supernatural. Overall nice first episode even tho I didn't like the cgi monsters but tons of great music specially the 50'es blues songs.
From a Racist drama to a monster movie in a couple of lovecraft quotes! Amazing!
At first am thinking what the fcuk am I watching here it just seemed to plod on and on with a boring story going nowhere fast. Thought I was watching Root's the next generation but nowhere near as good are as awesome. Am thinking well where's the Horror I've come for. This is way to slow for my liking I'll see myself out.
Boom then that last 20 mins kicked in, now that was super freaking awesome amazing
Ah I'll have some more of that thank-you very much, please let there be much more of that.
7/10 all for the last 20mins
Wow. The second act infuriated me so bad. Those cops and firefighters were POS.
First episode very well done, good quality and cinematography. Teasing small hints of the Lovecraftian aspects was a nice touch. Sadly it kinda felt like a documentary about racism for a (too) big a part of the run. Hope this gets better later on. The racism card gets played way too much in series these days. I know it's a sensitive point to make, but please don't push it so hard in shows and movies (even tho it was reality back in the days). This should be an artistic playground; not a political one.
It starts out slow but there’s plenty of tension as the episode goes on. Though, it is predictable by now. That Jordan Peele will always write the white people as either racist or just idiots.
I almost forgot to give my review of episode 1. First off, I was in disbelief that so many members gave the first episode such a high rating. Perhaps the name of the show caused me to judge it too harshly. I assumed since it was almost an all Black cast, that it would be one of those mushy lovey-dovey, topical Black (get your man back, or some Black man did someone wrong) stories. I really do hate romance stories, but thankfully, so far, this show is NOT one of those typical shows.
I thoroughly enjoyed this first episode. I would have given it a perfect 10; however, I decided to gave it an 8 because I felt the story dragged on longer than I thought it should haves. But..... Damn! I'm so glad I stuck with it, because by the end of the episode I was clinging to my chair in suspense. I totally did not expect to see what I saw. I really do love the mixture of real life history and sci-fi fiction. It sort of makes for a whole new genre never seen before. Sort of on the same level as "Lincoln The Vampire Slayer," (which I feel is another good movie to watch by the way).
The only thing so far that I find annoying, is the sound of those vampire monsters. Throughout the attack scene, I'm thinking to myself, why are those monsters making a sound that sounds very much like turkey before a slaughter? If it where not for the great action scenes towards the end of the episode, it truly might have been a turn-off for me. Sorry to say. However, I am definitely looking forward to seeing episode 2 this weekend.
I've been waiting for this show since the teaser dropped in May, and this first episode of Lovecraft Country is great! They got the sci-fi horror action moment out of the way in that opening dream sequence; an excellent one at that. Then we learn the struggle that these characters face and ramps up to the forest/cabin scene that reminded me of The Night of the Living Dead. I agree that some of the modern hip hop beats sort of take me out of the time period that this story is set in, but I understand the tone they're trying to go for. I may be a bit biased since all this takes place in my state of Massachusetts, but man give me some good spooks, Lovecraftian monsters, and I'm totally there. I can't wait to see what happens next!
Bad ass start to a show. The preview for the rest of the season looks just as bad ass.
Shout by The_ArgentinianBlockedParent2020-08-19T03:54:54Z
This pilot made me hate white people. The real monsters of the story.