“Devs” (Pilot Episode) Review by Josh Davis
May 25, 2020 10:50 am |
No one else makes sci-fi like writer/director Alex Garland.
After writing movies like “28 Days Later,” “Sunshine” and “Never Let Me Go,” he turned also to directing, churning out in succession the feature films “Ex Machina” (2014) and “Annihilation (2018).”
His latest as a writer/director, the FX/Hulu series “Devs,” maintains many of the traits that set his two movies apart: high concepts, a mastery of slow but tense pacing, incredible visuals, sparse dialog, and a score that elevates the material even further.
The series pilot follows young couple, Lily Chan (Sonoma Mizuno, returning for her third Garland project) and Sergei (Karl Glusman, “Love,” “Neon Demon”), who work at an advanced computing company called Amaya.
Segei, upon showing off an impressive project to his boss, the enigmatic Forest (Nick Offerman, “Parks and Recreation”), is promoted to a new project, known only as “Devs.”
Lily and Sergei talk that night and agree, whatever Devs is, they won’t and cannot talk about it home.
The next day, Sergei is taken by Forest himself to the new office, which happens to be set across a surreal futuristic forest and across an electromagnetic walkway suspended in mid air. It’s the kind of stuff Stanley Kubrick would have had wet dreams about.
Sergei, but not the audience, is shown what Devs really is, and it’s apparently so horrific or mind bending or possibly both, that he runs to the bathroom to shiver and vomit and stare off into space. He also presses record on a digital watch that apparently doubles as some classic James Bond spy tech, but is caught by Forest and murdered in the … forest.
As the pilot closes, Lily, who has been frantically searching for Sergei after he mysteriously vanished, finds his immolated body on the Amaya campus. It’s meant to look like a suicide, but we, the viewer, know better.
The story itself is pretty familiar — man in over his head finds something important and is murdered for it — but the way Garland and his excellent cast tell it is utterly unique.
“Devs” doesn’t look like anything else on television and, in fact, it doesn’t move or sound like anything else either.
There are simply shot moments made unspeakably tense by the Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow score, both of whom came back after scoring Garland’s two feature films.
Garland also knows how to expertly set up visual effects to tell a story. As of the pilot we don’t quite yet know what Devs, the top secret project, is, but we understand from the futuristic surroundings that it’s something just beyond the grasp of known, contemporary science. Garland can show, rather than tell, with the best of them.
The cast is also wonderful. Although they don’t have a lot to do in the pilot, there’s an incredible amount of restraint. Offerman is pitch perfect as Forest, and Mizuno’s stunned reaction upon seeing Sergei’s body is both expert in it’s simplicity and also so much more than most actors on television could show in a single, brief scene.
Devs, the show, isn’t for everyone. It’s slow and atmospheric and frightening, and it takes itself incredibly seriously. But if you’re looking for smart, cutting edge science fiction, there is nothing else like it.
Tags: Alex Garland Devs, Devs FX, Devs FX on Hulu
Categorised in: Television Reviews
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