To the Lake

I adore thrillers both in films and in literature. Furthermore, the scarier, the better for me. It is not a surprise that I fell in love with Yana Vagner's novel - Vongozero. For me it was an ultimate page turner, I literally couldn't tear myself from the book and binge-read it in three days.

Some time ago I heard about the series based on the novel. Unfortunately, I couldn't watch it among the first. But finally, I found an opportunity to dive into my favorite Universe and would like to share my first impressions with you. Some directors deliberately change a lot in the movie version and that often ruins the author's concept. In the case of this series the novel is treated very delicately.

Many characters and especially Anna look exactly the same as I imagined while reading the story and it's the best gift for all the fans of this novel, including me. Writing this text, I am wondering - how could have this book become a prediction of 2020!

The scariest part of both the book and the show is - that there are no zombies, no walking deads, yet it gives you the chill when you recognize these omens of our NEW NORMAL in it. And it takes courage to watch this series nowadays.

To The Lake: Virus runs rife, people coughing and dropping dead, you can tell they're infected by the reds of their eyes, so don't shot until you can see that. Moscow is sealed off, a plague city. Law and order breaks down, security units start looting. A group try to journey to a lake where they hope to find refuge on an island. Internal tensions in the group doesn't help. Quite violent with disturbing scenes. Interesting to see a Russian pandemic TV Series. On Netflix. 7/10.

It is a series where at certain points you have to turn your critical brain off and just accept some of the stupid decisions made by the characters. But you believe in there decisions because the acting is really great. So you buy into that fact that most of the characters are seriously flawed people and wont act rationally like you think you would in there situation.

I love Science fiction, but this is apocalypse horror fiction. Not really science fiction.. especially since we are experiencing a pandemic currently (hopefully that line doesnt age well...)... For all we know a proper epidemic could happen in our life time... where a good chunk of people on the planet die... Its not really space ships or aliens coming to visit... it's a reality that could happen.

They don't make the infected zombies or any reused crud like that. Its just people that get very sick and die very quickly. It's believable and is done really well.

My only complaint is the silly softcore scenes and hilariously bad music when they occur with the young kids... They seemed really out of place. If they took out that music and set the mood differently.. changed a bit of the dialogue to not be so corny... then those scenes would've fit within the seriousness of the rest of the series much better. Sure people want to bang when they think the end it near.. But you don't need to make a point of it so often in 8 episodes.. It's like they were trying to outmatch game of thrones.. but with awful music.

Anyway. Besides that complaint I really enjoyed everything else about this series. Especially the complex mix of characters and there opposing personality types, it keeps the series interesting between telling the over arching story of the world being taken over by a epidemic (and possibly a foreign force taking advantage of that)

I admit to binge watching this, after the first episode I was hooked and wanted to see what happend to them , yes there are some cheesy moments and some bad decisions but people faced with life and death decisions under great stress do not always act rationally personally I enjoyed it and look forward to a season two

I was being sceptical before watching the first episode, but when I turned it on, I was vastly surprised! It doesn't only have a great storyline, it also has a fabulous cast and setting(s). You can feel that the characters develop emotions for one another. There's hatred, love, sympathy, but most importantly, there's hope and trust. You can literally learn from this show and know that if we ever have to face an epidemic like that, you'll have to be able to not only adapt to the changes around you, but also have the ability to trust the ones that can and should be trusted.

Anyways, I am giving this series a 9/10, I would give it a 10 if a few more families were involved, it would have been more "diverse". Really recommend this show to anyone that loves post-apocalyptic movies etc.