MJ Harding

I didn't realize that this was a Coen Bros film until the credits rolled, but when the realization hit me I had that "aha" moment, or should I say the "Of course!" moment? While the film had plot devices galore, it seemed to me that all of the stories were held together by the idea of uncertainty and that maybe God is another name for this idea (or fact!). I also see that most of the uncertainty is focused on or emanating from human beings, so it's kind of like those horror movies where the call is coming from inside the house, but it's being made by the victim. In other words, humans are skin bags filled with uncertainty and this uncertainty is part of who we are and what manifests when we merge our lives with others.

So, right off this town brings area X from Annihilation (The Southern Reach Trilogy) to mind as well as a little bit of Tarkovsky's Stalker, but that is mostly because of the sepia tones/otherworldly feeling of the landscape. I'm not that far into the show, but the acting is good and any production that brings in Bjork can't go wrong, at least not in my eyes. My guess is that Katya is altering reality as we know it. Sure, the myopic view is to say that Katya has released some fundamental element into the earth and that is what is manufacturing these missing folks returning to life (in Area X it was a meteor)--and another reviewer went so far as to compare Katya to Invasion of the Body Snatchers-- but the ultimate goal (imo) is to reveal the strangeness of this phenomena that we call life, and therefore the strangeness of us. The townspeople, it will turn out, are playing Turing's Imitation Game with the very foundation of the cosmos.