DARK TOURIST
If your vacation itinerary involves trips to creepy abandoned cities and barren nuclear testing grounds, new Netflix series Dark Tourist may be your (clearly sugar-free) cup of tea. New Zealand journalist David Farrier explores the budding enterprise of “dark tourism” in this wholly unique eight-episode docuseries, which has him touring the sites of Jeffrey Dahmer’s murders in Milwaukee, hanging out with death cults in Mexico City, and exploring the slums of South Africa among other antibucket list activities. The show succeeds mainly in its ability to shed light on untold stories and settings like a “suicide forest” in Japan (where more than 100 bodies were found in 2013) and an “extreme” haunted house in Kentucky (where visitors are voluntarily tortured.) Proving that travel isn’t all eating pasta in Italy and taking photos of the Eiffel Tower, this show is a must for fans of the macabre.
Ever dream of surfing in Iceland? The 40-minute 2017 documentary Under An Arctic Sky depicts all of the efforts, doubts, and triumphs that went into turning that vivid dream into a reality as one of the worst storms in decades threatens to derail the whole enterprise. Six surfers travel to the remote north coast of Iceland to capture the ultimate moment: to surf in the middle of the night in front of a snowcovered mountain illuminated by the moon and the glowing Northern Lights. Along the way, they battle trips to the hospital, cars buried in snow, cameras frozen in ice, and other frustrations as they are forced to improvise on the fly with the ever-present prospect of failure looming. Employing high-tech cameras, drone footage, time-lapse photography, and Kickstarter crowdfunding, the film demonstrates what can happen when you truly challenge yourself to venture deep into the unknown. Which is pretty much the whole point of travel, right?