ten-thousand-marbles

I am a big fan of the DB Cooper story. This documentary at about three hours long doesn't offer much to the already existing story. The first episode is decent, but mostly a recapping of the story. From there it devolves into what is mostly speculation, a lot of which is absurd and a waste of time. Overall, it examines things from a different angle, but gets lost in the backstory of the backstory.

I didn't have high expectations going in and really just wanted to see how dumb it was. The interviewees are mostly cringe worthy, two of which are self proclaimed zombie experts who contribute little. It's essentially these speculatory interviews sandwiched between the same twenty visuals on a loop. The Nostradamus factor is laughable at best. So much vagueness. Pass.

The Haunting of Hill House is one of the best things I've seen in the last year, so I was excited to see Bly Manor, and had some high expectations. I was more than a little disappointed.

Bly Manor is slow and drawn out. It could have easily been edited down to half its length. The main storyline (if you can call it that) is diluted and bogged down by too many secondary storylines. It tries too hard and gets lost in the seemingly endless amount of character life drama. Hill House also did this but to a much lesser extent. The main storyline stayed front and center, and was scary and unsettling. This is not the case with Bly Manor. I can't say it doesn't have it's moments, but they are far too spread out and with too much fluff in between.

A character in the final episode even states that it's not a ghost story, but a love story. They weren't wrong. I just wish this reveal had come in the first episode to save me the nine hours of drudgery. I was expecting a ghost story, and a good one at that.