I absolutely loved it! I was already very much looking forward to it as a fan of the book, and I was really impressed at how it all turned out.( Read more... )
Nice review! Yes to all your write in here, specifically:
And one of the most telling moments of all is when Ann’s father is telling Camille that it was better that his daughter be murdered than raped. And he’s telling this to Camille, someone who was gang-raped, someone who is covered in scars. It seems like she’s hated by Adora precisely because she insists on surviving as a damaged and ‘you're already ruined’ woman, rather than an idealised dead girl who can be forever remembered as perfect.
It's a moment that tells us so much about these characters and ... our culture in general, really. I don't know if it's possible to do it, but I would LOVE a sequel.
It really did very effectively convey just how creepy and insular small towns can be. And yes! The general sentiment seems to be to leave it alone, we don’t want another series, so it doesn’t sound like there is going to be one, but man I would love a follow-up with Camille and Amma. The short sharp ending was perfect, but at the same time a part of me was disappointed not to get more into the flashbacks and motives of the killings, and i would have loved to have seen Camille visit Amma in juvenile detention and still attempt to have a relationship with her. The ending of the miniseries does pretty much leave you hanging with how Camille is going to deal with Amma, and I think the actress playing Amma would have rocked those scenes from the book with Amma with all her hair cut off screaming ‘I like hurting people’. We really didn’t get nearly enough of opnely sociopathic Amma in the show :P
I feel like I made a mistake watching the show without reading the book first. Readers seem to get a lot more 'enjoyment' (that's not the right word here) out of it. The ending felt very rushed to me while the first six episodes were very drawn out, bordering on boring most of the time.
Alice and Camille sharing a room was rather weird to me, too. Having two people with such a significant age gap together emphasizes the fact that they only have their illness in common far too much. Not every pair will bond over music like they did.
Yes suspension of disbelief and all that, but it would have made far more sense to me to pair Alice with someone closer to her own age, and you’d think her therapists would have realised that. Surely it would mess up any fragile teenage girl in her position if they were paired with someone in their 30’s who was still trapped in the same cycles and finding it impossible to recover
Oh and regarding the pacing, I think that it does help if you’ve read the book first, but also I wonder if hbo misrepresented it slightly? Because the people I’ve heard commenting on the slow pacing have generally been frustrated because they were led to except a murder mystery with lots of twists and investigating, and so a lot of episodes felt slightly meandering to them for that reason, whereas I always knew to expect more of a character study of Camille, and that all the family scenes had a purpose and were were going to tie back to the murders in the end. You might find that makes a big difference on re-watch once you know where it’s all going, although I do agree that the pacing of the final episode was a little too rushed in some ways
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And one of the most telling moments of all is when Ann’s father is telling Camille that it was better that his daughter be murdered than raped. And he’s telling this to Camille, someone who was gang-raped, someone who is covered in scars. It seems like she’s hated by Adora precisely because she insists on surviving as a damaged and ‘you're already ruined’ woman, rather than an idealised dead girl who can be forever remembered as perfect.
It's a moment that tells us so much about these characters and ... our culture in general, really. I don't know if it's possible to do it, but I would LOVE a sequel.
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Alice and Camille sharing a room was rather weird to me, too. Having two people with such a significant age gap together emphasizes the fact that they only have their illness in common far too much. Not every pair will bond over music like they did.
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