¡QUÉ HORROR! 2019
Candidate #9
INTO THE DARK
Season 1 Episode 4
NEW YEAR, NEW YOU
(December 2018)
NEW YEAR, NEW YOU
(December 2018)
“Do you at least have one for me?”
“I’m sorry! I only have one umbrella!”
“Jesus, Kayla!”
“Who has two umbrellas?”
“Mary f*ckin’ Poppins! I don’t know!”
A New Year’s Eve gathering between four friends
from high school goes off the rails when it becomes a brutal opportunity to come
to terms with a past tragedy.
That’s the set-up for Into the Dark’s fourth “episode,” New Year, New You.
In this one, Mr.
Robot’s Carly Chaikin plays social
media influencer Danielle Williams, “… creator of Get Well Danielle and owner of Very Very Vegetable juices,” who’s
about to get a big break with an upcoming TV show.
If she survives the night, that is.
“Nothing stands between me and all of my desires.”
Sophia Takal, who appeared in Ti West’s V/H/S segment “Second Honeymoon,”
directs from a script she co-wrote with Adam Gaines (who’s credited for the story).
Among other things, Takal uses New Year, New You to highlight the culture of reinvention fostered
by social media.
It’s the 21st century reality we live in,
where your millions of followers only know the you that you’ve curated for them,
with videos and photos and posts calculated to reinforce your brand.
And where the sins from the shadows of your past
are potential land mines waiting to explode and leave your online career in
ruins.
And, just to leave us with a stinger, in its
closing moments, New Year, New You
also--in a ludicrous yet also disturbing way--shows just how dizzying the emotional turnover on the ‘net
can be…
“I mean, you know how it is with mob mentality on the Internet, right?
It’s not innocent until proven guilty.”
Parting Shot 1:
Takal said to Entertainment Weekly that she hopes the audience “… question[s] the ideas they have about what it means to be successful, what it means to be valuable as a human being. So much of our society is outwardly-focused and focused on external validation, and social media turns us into a product in a way, always needing more and more validation. I think that can be insidious and damaging to people, especially young women.”
Parting Shot 2:
For some reason, this is the first Into the Dark episode released without its own poster, so I had to resort to a screencap from the trailer for the image above.
I’ll
update this post if/when a poster pops up.Takal said to Entertainment Weekly that she hopes the audience “… question[s] the ideas they have about what it means to be successful, what it means to be valuable as a human being. So much of our society is outwardly-focused and focused on external validation, and social media turns us into a product in a way, always needing more and more validation. I think that can be insidious and damaging to people, especially young women.”
Parting Shot 2:
For some reason, this is the first Into the Dark episode released without its own poster, so I had to resort to a screencap from the trailer for the image above.
