The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly)
A Murder at the End of the World
Emma Corrin and Clive Owen star in a moody, absorbing FX/Hulu whodunit about a hacker investigating a death at a tech billionaire’s retreat
There is so much being said, so much of the time, in FX/Hulu’s A Murder at the End of the World. Its characters are geniuses on a retreat hosted by Andy (Clive Owen), a tech billionaire who believes that “It is original thought, more than money, oil or even water, that will determine if there is a future to be had.” They loaf about their remote Icelandic hotel tossing out ideas, unveiling experiments, debating the finer points of climate change or surveillance and dreaming up new ways to save the world.
Yet what becomes clear, in ways mostly illuminating but occasionally frustrating, is how little this chatter amounts to. At the heart of Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s moody mystery is the conviction that what people claim to think matters far less than what they actually feel and do. As becomes apparent when a guest drops dead, wealth, power and influence can only do so much to save humanity from its own humanness — from our mortal bodies, inconvenient feelings and messy impulses.
If Andy represents a particularly arrogant combination of doomerism and tech optimism, he has a ready foil in protagonist Darby (Emma Corrin), a 24-year-old hacker. Where Andy is eager to dismiss the tragedy as an accident, Darby is sure it’s murder. She has experience with such things: Her place at the retreat is owed to the success of her recent memoir, chronicling her amateur pursuit of an elusive serial killer with the help of her erstwhile boyfriend (Harris Dickinson’s Bill).
A Murder at the End of the World slips back and forth between Darby’s current case and the one that made her reputation, borrowing from the clockwork precision of Agatha Christie, the chill of Scandinavian noir and the romance of the American road trip, with a touch of near-future sci-fi. It’s frequently gorgeous.
Marling and Batmanglij have an eye for striking details, from the crimson of a coat against snow to the dusty golds of a backwoods road in summer, and a feel for the idiosyncrasies of their self-consciously special characters.
Some, like Andy or his wife (Marling), are purposely hard to read. Others conjure entire inner universes through a private smirk or silent eye roll. No one is more legible than Darby herself. Corrin doesn’t just convey disbelief or grief or curiosity; their face registers every shade in between as Darby works through emotions. Such carefully drawn characters keep A Murder at the End of the World afloat over rougher patches, including uneven pacing and some heavy-handed dialogue.
Somewhat ironically, the focus on character keeps the themes from cohering as well as they could. Over seven episodes that range from 40 to 75 minutes, the series hits on topics as wideranging as misogyny and wealth inequality. However, only some are tackled head-on; others are relegated to background color as the story tilts toward more personal concerns.
But the emphasis on individuals over ideas reflects an ultimately humanist core. Like many onscreen sleuths before her, Darby suffers from caring too much about her cases.
She cracks them not by getting into the killer’s mind but by understanding the victims. Her obsession is driven by a desire for justice. When Bill suggests she step back for the sake of her well-being, Darby explodes: “When we let someone die unnamed and unacknowledged, we’re basically saying we’re OK with it.”
At its worst, the series moves the way Andy’s titans talk, circling its gloomy central concerns without seeming to get anywhere. But at its best, it channels Darby’s anguish over existing in a world that can feel beautiful one moment and painful the next. While Andy and his acolytes fix their eyes on the future, A Murder at the End of the World makes a case for paying attention to what’s happening now.
AIRDATE Tuesday, Nov. 14 (Hulu)
CAST Emma Corrin, Clive Owen, Harris Dickinson, Brit Marling, Alice Braga, Joan Chen, Raúl Esparza
CREATORS Brit Marling, Zal Batmanglij