Archive 81 is another terrible hit Netflix

The archivist restores the video of a student who learned about the secret cult and died in a fire

The first season of the Horror “Archive 81” - a series based on the podcast of the same name, was published on Netflix. The main character is the archivist Dan Turner, who restores the video of a student who died in a fire in the mid-1990s. It seems that shortly before her death, she was able to calculate the underground cult, worshiping either the demon or the ancient God. "Medusa" tells how the "Archive 81" managed to be the first greater hit of Netflix in 2022.

About podcast "Archive 81"

The podcast “Archive 81” was invented by two producers Friend Mark Solinger and Daniel Powell, inspired by the paranormal horror of the 1990s, like “Twin Pixes” and “Secret Materials”. The first episode was released in 2016. The authors mixed the “Found Film” genre in “Archive 81”, city legends and conspiracy theories. Their podcast was not documentary, all stories were fictional.

The “Archive 81” of Sollinger and Powell is dedicated to the museum archivist Dan Terner, who restores the audio day of the girl named Melody Pendras. In the 1990s, she lived in the New York apartment building Visser, where she interviewed local residents for her educational project.

“Archive 81” consists of three seasons, each episode of the podcast includes an interview with the inhabitants of Viser, telephone conversations of Dan locked in a bunker with a best friend or recording a podcast, which this friend begins to conduct after the mysterious disappearance of Dan (yes, this is a podcast in a podcast).

The Netflix series is based on the Archive 81, but this is not a full -fledged adaptation of the podcast. The ties and the names of the heroes coincide, but many events and biographies of characters in the Netflix project are different. For example, in the series, Melody has an affair with a guy from Visir, and in the podcast she has a wife.

What is the "Archive 81"

From the outside it may seem that Dan Turner (Momuda Ati) is not the most exciting life: he works as an archivist in the museum of a moving image and shakes mold from a video tape all day. But the enthusiastic Dan suits everything. “This is the“ Circle ”-a 1958 horror-anthology! A kind of predecessor of the "twilight zone" ! " - He enthusiastically says to a colleague.

Dan’s life becomes more interesting when a video cassette enters his hands marked “confidentially”. On the film-the first series of the educational project of the student Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi), who died in 1994 in a fire in the New York apartment building Visser. Dan restores the cassette and soon meets the millionaire Verjil Davenport (Martin Donovan), the customer of this work, who offers the hero 100 thousand dollars for the restoration of the diary. The only condition is that you will have to work in complete solitude, outside the city, in a house without the Internet and mobile communications.

Melodi moved to Visser for the filming of a training project. The student literally did not part with the camera: she knocked on all the doors, interviewed the neighbors and was warmly interested in their life. One of the locals composed avant-garde music, someone collected antiques, someone (the local Catholic priest) in his free time helped neighbors to expel demons from their loved ones. The inhabitants of the complex united something: at night they gathered in the basement and chanted the ancient god Kalego.

Such a life of the “Viser” appears before Dan's eyes, who throughout all episodes restores Melody's diaries. But the main character is not the most reliable narrator: behind his shoulders a difficult childhood and psychiatric hospital. It seems to him that the phone is listened to in the bunker, someone is hiding in the forest, and the monster is about to jump out of the monitor. Therefore, the question arises: in the "Visser" did the demon really cause or Dan just goes crazy in isolation?

How the series was accepted by the public

“Archive 81” reached Netflix as early as January 14, but they began to talk about the series only a week after the premiere. This is not the first time this happens with the projects of the streaming service: the horror “Ghosts of the House on the Hill” was released on October 12, 2018, but only a month later he was noticed and called the most terrible series of autumn (or even a year). The Western spectators who became a hit “Game in Kalmar” did not at first not notice-the series released on September 17 began to beat the first records only in October-November, until it finally became the most visible series of Netflix for all the time.

A month after the premiere, the mouth in social networks also worked with the Archive 81. Now the series is in the TOP-10 on Netflix around the world: the rating is based on data from 85 countries, in most of which the series occupies the first or second position (in the USA and Russia “Archive 81”, only the fourth season of “Ozark” is inferior to the fourth season).

You can briefly explain its popularity like this: “Archive 81” I want to watch with hard. It is impossible to turn it off until you get to the final credits.

And if more?

The driving force of the “Archive 81” is an unsolvable mystery, which over time is overgrown with even more details. Why is a millionaire so interesting some student project? Why was Dan sent to the bunker? How is this due to the fire in which the girl died? With each episode of mystical, religious and even fantastic nuances, there are more and more.

The plot in “Archive 81” develops leisurely - every new event, whether it is the appearance of participants in the cult, cybermonistan or hallucinogenic moss (yes, there is such a thing here), patiently waits for its wings. “Archive 81” is a typical slush , which accelerates for quite some time. But still, he manages to keep his attention thanks to the twists and the Sinefilian Easter.

In the series, you can find many references to classic horror, for example, to the “witch from Blair”, “Astral”, “Shine” and a dozen more significant paintings for the genre. But the horror films “Archive 81” are not limited and alternating the elements borrowed from horror, with references to pop culture: against the background, the posters of “nights of living dead” and “travels to the moon” flash, and in one of the scenes Dan is reviewing the “Solaris” by Andrei Tarkovsky.

The creator of “Archive 81” Rebecca Sonnenshaine calls the series “Casket with surprises”. This is not her first mystical horror (but the first in the status of Showranner), for example, she produced the “Outlook” - a series of comics Robert Kirkman, the author of “Walking Dead”. And I also wrote a script for the top ten episodes of the Vampire Diaries.

In the credits of the “Archive 81” there are other names important for the modern horror. The producers of the project were James Van (Astral, Evil) and Paul Harris Bordman (Six Demons Emily Rose, Crick-4).

“Archive 81” can scare, surprise, and make you break your head. The series is made so convincingly that you involuntarily begin to believe in the myth of the demon invented by the scriptwriters - and you run to look for information about it on Wikipedia. Texts with headlines "Who is the demon of Kalego?" Have already appeared on the Internet? " And “Where to see the Anthology“ Circle ”? " . In other words, the “Archive 81” captures not only the history itself, but also its details. However, whether they will extend the show for the second season, we do not know yet.

Egor Parfenenkov