Archive 81 (Netflix 2022)

Netflix, to be fair, has something of a reputation when it comes to genre stuff. Those of us who love sci-fi and horror have come to regard the fanfare surrounding a new series or movie with great scepticism. Netflix has let us down too often with a great opener followed by a decline into rambling dullness or just plain idiocy. Fortunately, when the streaming guys get it right the results can be remarkable. Last year we had Midnight Mass. And 2022 kicked off with Archive 81, a very satisfying serial based on a hit podcast.

Archive 81 is intelligent horror that nods to Lovecraft, among others, with a tale that manages to combine elements of sci-fi, black magic, and conspiracy theory. It has a good cast, the performances are fine to excellent, and every episode is solidly entertaining. There is very little excess fat here, but the pace is relatively slow. It builds, in each episode, to a climactic revelation that takes us further down to the road to full-on craziness.

So, what's it about? The archive of the title is a set of digital videotapes from 1994. They were shot by Melody Pendras, a student filming a project on a New York apartment building, the Visser. The building burned down and Melody was presumed dead. But the tapes, though fire damaged, survived. And a wealthy businessman, Virgil Davenport, wants them examined and digitised. He recruits an expert, Dan Turner, to do the job. Dan, we discover, lost his entire family to a fire around the time the Visser was destroyed. There is a link between him and some very murky events.

The process of recovering the soot-blackened tapes means Jake gets to watch Melody moving in to the Visser and trying to interview its oddball residents. We learn that the Visser burned down in 1924 - the year a mysterious comet, Kharon, passed close to the earth. She befriends Jess, a smart teenager who knows everyone. It soon emerges that the building is the home of a cult led by Sam, a smiling and creepy individual. Even stranger, though, is the way Dan keeps encountering visions of Melody - can she be an illusion, a ghost, or something far stranger? 

No spoilers here, but the interaction between Dan and Melody makes this is a kind of paranormal love story - only it works, because both are tormented souls reaching out to each other through some kind of rip in time. The cult's antics are genuinely disturbing, and the various plot strands hold together well. The finale is well-earned, as Dan and Melody both discover the truth about the cult's aims and disturbing power is unleashed.

Much of the story pivots on the power of the image - the conventional view in magical thinking that the symbol is the thing. At one point a demonic entity does a Sadako, trying to emerge from a screen. This sort of nod to the classics is very satisfying, a true homage not merely cheap gimmicks. Overall, it is one of the best TV shows I've seen since, well, Midnight Mass. 

A final word. There's much internet chatter about where the title comes from. For me it seemed obvious - a BBC drama written by David Rudnick, of Penda's Fen fame.