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The 2019 Twilight Zone, executive-produced and presented by horror auteur Jordan Peele, showcases a few intriguing ideas and a few fascinating performances. But despite the advantages of technicolor, a marquee cast, and a doubled length for each story, the new series’s episodes lack vitality and flair. It’s not entirely fair that this Twilight Zone can’t just exist on its own terms—free of comparison to the original show. But it’s an unavoidable comparison; Peele’s Twilight Zone makes copious references to Serling’s original run, via means including its opening titles, full-length episode homages (such as the second episode, “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet,” a reimagining of the original “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”), and, most of all, Peele’s in-episode monologues, in which he addresses the audience à la Serling.
This Twilight Zone exists in the same world as the hugely popular Black Mirror,which was widely hailed for taking the anthology modern-horror concept further than it had ever gone before. Whatever you may think of Black Mirror, it undeniably works hard to create tense, unsettling, high-concept speculative fiction. By comparison, the 2019 Twilight Zone feels quaint. I appreciate that, at times, this version opts for unexplained phenomena, instead of the endless exposition of so many minutely detailed puzzle-box shows. But in the four episodes I saw, it felt less like the show was intentionally creating a haunting aura, and more as if it had merely failed to resolve each plot’s ambiguities.
Take, for example, that remake, “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet.” It’s a symbolically rich episode about discourse and belief, all taking place in the increasingly high-pressure claustrophobia chamber of a transatlantic flight. Adam Scott plays a both-sides-y pundit who finds an MP3 player loaded up with an investigative all about the flight he’s on—specifically, its horrible, mysterious, forthcoming crash, which, of course, sends Scott’s character into a panic. The paranoia of flying in the age of terrorism is evoked well, mostly through thematic background noise: MAGA hat-wearers board the plane, as do women in hijab, Sikh men wearing turbans, and a disconcertingly dead-eyed pilot.
But as it plays out, the story is a strange parable. Is its lesson to listen to warnings from the future, or to ignore them, or to find some superior way of communicating them to others? Or is the lesson merely to avoid flight 1015, on October 15, scheduled at 10:15 P.M.? It’s hard to say—and rather than take the effort of explaining how that fully recorded podcast from the future got onto the plane, or why Scott couldn’t get anyone to listen to it, the episode waves its hands a little, pointing to its loose ends with the same shrug: it remains a mystery, because the airplane, and the podcast, and Adam Scott, are all in . . . the Twilight Zone.
At least “Nightmare at 30,000 Feet” is wildly suspenseful—brought home by a delightful performance from Chris Diamantopoulos. The Comedian, the premiere starring Kumail Nanjiani, explores what it takes to become famous with a sharp, evocative premise—and then repeats the same beat through the episode’s predictable end, draining the episode of its charm.
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It’s not surprising that when Peele’s production intersects with politics, it soars; the filmmaker has established himself as a deft interpreter of thorny topics. The question prompted by the irregular, disappointing first episodes of The Twilight Zone is where his voice has gone. Technically, it’s present in every episode, summarizing plots with a few droll props and a sumptuous suit. But unlike the unassuming Serling, Peele seems self-conscious and posed when delivering his narration; his voice does not really sound like his own. And that might be the biggest problem of all. This Twilight Zone fulfills all the basic requirements of competence, but seems to have a limited ability to improve upon, or engage with, the deep-seated anxieties of the original. Where is Peele's singular, racially conscious vision? It's a mystery fit for.... the Twilight Zone.