Forst

The last minutes of this seven series thriller were ruined by a poor end that I cannot spoil further here. These episodes included everything that you expect from a dark murder mystery. The soundtrack and special sounds made it really creepy. The main actors delivered a top performance and I watched it in original language with French subtitles. Nice landscapes of Poland that I have never seen before offered the perfect atmosphere. The running time of each part wasn't too long and it was never boring. This novel has been written by the polish writer Remigiusz Mróz.

It is not a very new and never shown story but the elements were original. I would have rated 7/10 but as I told at the beginning the end was disappointing and so the final vote is 6/10.

The Poles know how to make quality, dark crime thrillers and dramas. That's why it was a pity that this was not one of them. The series starts promisingly, but by the third episode at the latest, the downward spiral begins. The series becomes more and more implausible and illogical. At the same time, the number of clichés increases. Not even the twist at the end saves the series. That in itself is very unfortunate. The beginning seemed promising, the series was well made, shot and staged. The landscapes were on the one hand starkly beautiful and on the other hopeless. This was a missed opportunity.

I thought my eyes would roll out of my head 10 minutes in, and it just kept getting worse.

Tries way too hard to be gritty and atmospheric with every scene, no matter how pedestrian, framed (and scored) to feel like the pivotal moment in a thriller where Our Hero goes into the serial killer's lair. If you tried to turn this into a drinking game where you had to take a shot every time it copied a better writer/director, you'd need your stomach pumped halfway through the first episode.

I'm a native Polish speaker, so nothing was lost in translation.

Honestly deserves a lower rating, in purely objective terms, but compared to the state of television today, a five feels fair.

Our Polish cinematography is always behind - 20 years after the world discovered romantic comedies, we were making romantic comedies, and now, 10 years after the world discovered serial killer series, we are making serial killer series. And each one is identical. Every dark Polish series is a mishmash of Swedish series. There's a detective with a past, who has issues with his superior, there's a rebellious journalist, there's a psychopathic killer performing rituals. How many times have you seen this? So this one is for connoisseurs - those who don't have enough yet. The actors are good, the cinematography is good, but there's too much repetition and too many stereotypes. Not great directorial work.

This series has an excellent premise, a very interesting and solid development, a severe amount of violence, a cunning villain, relatively well-developed characters, a fluid and tense script, good actors, good performances, atmosphere and photography that are always heavy and suffocating, in other words the almost perfect recipe. At times it even reminded me of Seven.

But the ending is absolutely disappointing. I even think that the final scene was written on purpose to leave a hook for a second season. However, I believe that if there is, it will be clear that everything would be resolved with one more episode, not an entire season. It would give a rate of 7, but with that ending, 6 is enough.

Some screenwriters need to be humble and remember that sometimes less can be more.