The truth lies in the dark.
True Detective Night Country follows Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) as she is called in to investigate the disappearance of several scientists from an Alaskan research centre. The eight men seemingly vanished without a trace leaving behind only a severed tongue that Danvers deduces belonged to a Indigenous woman and not one of the missing men. Because of the Indigenous connection Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) is then called in, believing the case to link back to Annie Kowtok, a woman who was brutally murdered but whose case remains unsolved.
The pair begin investigating both cases in the hopes of finding a connection, soon finding the men naked and frozen solid with their clothes all folded neatly besides them. A hunt for a serial killer then begins and the town is plunged into lines of inquiry as the endless night goes on and Christmas creeps nearer. Can the two women get to the truth before it’s too late or will the evidence disappear into the endless Alaskan winter?
Despite this show’s rampant popularity over the years I’d never actually seen any episodes of True Detective and so Night Country was my first introduction to the show, normally it’d be weird to start with season four but with this being an anthology series I didn’t think It’d matter in the grand scheme of things. I will say I really enjoyed Night Country, the series had an interesting mystery and some well-rounded characters and I enjoyed the overall vibe and Alaskan setting. I have seen a lot of people online slating this season as the show’s worst yet but if anything that makes me even more excited to watch the first three just to see if they’re as good as everyone makes out.
The mystery here was very well done and right from the first episode I was completely hooked. Instead of your typical murder we instead deal with the complete vanishing of several men, which in a way felt even scarier because there were endless possibilities of where they could have been. When we eventually do find them, frozen solid and in the middle of nowhere, the questions keep on coming and I really enjoyed piecing everything together and trying to solve this thing alongside Danvers and Navarro. The narrative had a slight horror feel and there was always that lingering feeling that whatever took them wasn’t quite human (more on that later), for so many people to just vanish opened up endless horrible possibilities and the entire season had such an unsettling feel.
I’m not sure if this is the case with the other seasons but Night Country incorporated some slight supernatural/horror elements into the story, which historically I’ve not always been a fan of. A lot of the season played out more like a horror film that just happened to feature cops than an actual police procedural and it still seems like a lot of what happened went unexplained or passed off as ‘spiritual visions’. I will admit I enjoyed the horror vibes at times and the Alaskan setting definitely helped the scare factor but it still seemed out of place within the True Detective universe and I kind of wish we’d stuck to reality based murders.
The Alaskan setting and endless night was brilliantly used here and it really leant in to the darker side of the series (both literally and metaphorically). The very secluded town plagued by darkness combined your classic small town mystery with something much darker and dangerous. Visually Ennis was a very beautiful place but I also think living there would feel very lonely at times and the narrative was able to use all of this to craft something really wonderful. A mystery’s location is often as big a character as the killer or detective themselves and Ennis, Alaska was really something special.
Overall I really enjoyed True Detective Night Country and it served as a fun introduction to the show for me. I really loved the Alaskan setting, constant state of night and the almost horror infused set up with the missing scientists. Foster and Reis were both brilliant as our lead detectives Danvers and Navarro and I really loved Bennett as Officer Pete as well. I will say some of the show’s more mystical/supernatural aspects caught me off guard but apart from this I enjoyed the series as a whole and definitely want to go back and check out the first three seasons.
Ramblings of a Supposed Writer 