Slow build pays off in eerie ‘Archive 81’
Horror movies have a responsibility to get to the point and start the scares. They generally have about 90 minutes to do their job, maybe two hours. The pressure is on. But a horror series can afford to stretch out its legs a little. If you’re invested — and if you’re watching, you’re probably invested — you’ll provide some latitude. You may have no idea what’s happening after two episodes, and you may not be terribly scared, but you’ll be willing to wait and see.
The new Netflix series “Archive 81” takes full advantage of this leeway. It builds slowly, teasing you, daring you to turn it off. But there’s promise in its premise, which finds a fragile video archivist (played by Mamoudou Athie) hired to reconstruct a collection of videotapes that survived a Manhattan fire. Dan’s new boss (Martin Donovan, always welcome) has sent him to a remote facility in the Catskills, explaining that the tapes are too delicate to be moved. Something fishy is going on here. And you know you want to hang out long enough to see what it is.
From the start, “Archive 81” is put together with a high degree of craft, skill and imagination. There are basically two worlds here: Dan’s present-day world in the snowy, isolated Catskills, and the world on the tapes, 25 years earlier, in which a young woman, Melody (Dina Shihabi), interviews the residents of the building destroyed by that fire. The filmmakers, particularly the five editors, make the connections between these two worlds eerily, increasingly permeable, bringing everyone, characters and viewers, to wonder what’s real and what flows from the occult goings-on that preoccupy Melody as she observes her strange new neighbors.
“Archive 81” asks enough unspoken questions to get you wanting answers. And at a certain point, maybe halfway through, it starts rewarding your curiosity with genuine fear. There’s a terrifying seance scene you probably shouldn’t watch alone, and a number of dream sequences in which nobody seems to be asleep. At a certain point, Dan starts to believe he can rescue the Melody he sees on the tapes. “Archive 81” creates a mood essential to effective horror: It keeps you on-guard and off-balance. And it does this by taking its time, by building, slowly but surely, until you can’t look away.
Something about found footage is inherently scary if handled intelligently. The show name-checks “The Blair Witch Project,” and it could have mentioned any number of other kindred spirits if it cared to. As Dan, who we are told has recently suffered a mental breakdown, grows increasingly engrossed in his work, the filmmakers create a sense that he’s falling into what he (and the audience) sees onscreen. The show also makes the most of that 25-year time difference and our knowledge of the fire; we suspect some of these people are dead, beaming in from the beyond.
Based on a podcast of the same name, “Archive 81” uses old ingredients to yield something that feels fresh and new. So stick around. Your patience will be rewarded.