Reviews
[Review] Hulu’s “Into the Dark” Brings in the New Year With the Winning ‘New Year, New You’
“New Year, New You” dabbles with toxic femininity and festering insecurities with an emotional, dark story set against New Year’s Eve.
“Happy fucking New Year!”
New Year’s Eve is a time of self-reflection, looking towards the future, and hopefully starting off the new year with the best foot forward. It’s a time that’s meant to be optimistic and encouraging. These aren’t topics that are typically conducive to the horror genre, but Into the Dark‘s “New Year, New You” finds a dark way to weaponize them.
“New Year, New You” marks Into the Dark’s first female director, Sophia Takal, but the episode also features an entirely female cast, too. “New Year, New You” makes this gender slant part of the episode’s discussion as it tackles themes like society’s focus on superficial traits, the loss of identity, and the growing power that social media has in its ability to effect our equilibriums. The subject matter and absence of males in this episode aren’t accidents and Sophia Takal’s “New Year, New You” wants to say something important about the female experience. Not only does Takal get her point across, but she also turns out what feels like the most fully realized, mature installment of Into the Dark, yet.
This entry of Into the Dark looks at a group of millennial friends who reunite to hang out and reminisce on New Year’s Eve. However, once they begin to dig into their grudges and reopen old wounds courtesy of an innocuous game of “Never Have I Ever,” they begin to notice that their beef with each other may be manifesting in very real and very dangerous ways. Here’s the thing, this is the first episode of Into the Dark that actually has a disposable cast! Every other episode has either been a two-hander (with “The Body” being a slight exception), but this episode’s larger cast allows the installment to embrace its inner slasher film. This episode feels a lot like a more introspective, dark version of I Know What You Did Last Summer, and it’s exceptionally strong debut work from Sophia Takal.
Much of “New Year, New You” centers around Danielle Williams (Carly Chaikin). Danielle is a crystal-wearing social media influencer who peddles wellness cocktails and other products and Takal explores the phoniness of her image and persona in clever ways. She bombards Danielle’s videos with impatient pop-ups where hashtags and clip art invade what she says. It perfectly highlights what this character represents and Takal uses metonymic devices like that to shed light on all of these characters.
Alexis (Suki Waterhouse), on the other hand, is pretty much the opposite of Danielle, or at least wants to believe that she is. At one point Danielle catches herself in a mirror and can’t help but pose, whereas mirrors are a source of anxiety for Alexis. She leads an unglamorous life that’s been full of loss and perseverance rather than the cushy road that Danielle has found herself on. She makes for the more compelling protagonist and it makes for a better story to see Alexis unable to avoid Danielle’s social media presence and get inundated with alerts about how much everyone loves her. Alexis becomes even more insecure about her faults when she’s back in Danielle’s orbit. Kayla and Chloe, the other friends in this reunion, have similar feelings about their successful friend.
The chemistry between this group is wonderful, all of these actors click, and their dialogue feels incredibly realistic (right down to the fact that Elon Musk would hook up with one of them). They actually feel like friends, which is pretty fundamental to this story. Just simple moments of gossip and girl talk between these friends manage to be exciting due to how well they sell it. It’s such a natural atmosphere through this episode, so when the dread sets in and things start to go wrong, it’s especially chaotic.
Danielle is slowly able to win over her former friends, but Alexis remains distant and the animosity between the two of them is another major strength of this story. Alexis does not want to let Danielle into her life and as this story continues, the drastic nature of these feelings becomes increasingly apparent. Takal depicts Alexis’ instability through various editing tricks and camera fades that help the audience get inside her fragile state.
“New Year, New You” also plays with the audience’s perception of Danielle and just when it seems like she maybe isn’t so bad she’ll do something that’s incredibly artificial. It’s hard to peg down exactly what she thinks about all of this and it shows surprising depth to what looks like a shallow caricature. Suki Waterhouse gives a layered performance as Alexis, but Carly Chaikin really shines as the delusional Danielle (who’s kind of just an exaggerated version of her character from Suburgatory).
“New Year, New You” pushes forward a message of female empowerment, but it also looks at what happens when this idea gets perverted and the dangers of false female empowerment. Or what happens when the wrong female is the one that inspires others. It’s the perfect subtext for a story of this nature and although all of these friends enable and encourage each other, it’s not always for the best. The episode even viciously uses female beauty products as a means of torture to truly tap into the idea of toxic femininity.
“New Year, New You’s” script, which is written by Sophia Takal and Adam Gaines, is incredibly effective and efficient. It avoids exposition whenever possible and creates a strong mystery for the audience. It becomes clear that certain characters are conspiring against others, and that people are keeping major secrets about their past, but it allows the audience to dwell on these questions and generates suspense, rather than outright explain what’s going on. In a similar sense, the episode’s swooping cinematography stops and lingers on certain items in the home as a clever way to tip you off to the fact that they’ll be important later on, almost in a Hitchcockian manner. Every decision that “New Year, New You” makes respects the audience’s intelligence. It lets its story organically blossom over time and the episode’s bigger revelations hit with a greater impact as a result.
The episode is also sure to touch on many New Year’s Eve cultural touchstones like New Year’s resolutions, going over your accomplishments of the year, and the countdown at midnight. It’s nice to see how much “New Year, New You” plays into the New Year’s Eve angle rather than it being an incidental detail in the story, like how Thanksgiving was handled in “Flesh & Blood.” There’s also not enough horror that uses New Year’s Eve as its landscape, so Takal’s “New Year, New You” sets a strong standard here.
“New Year, New You” takes its time to build to the true horror and get to the meat of its story, but there are still enough creepy moments through the first act to maintain interest. Once things really get going, they don’t slow down and hold back and it’s all the better because of the incredible character work that’s gone down in the beginning. The turn in this episode really works and the way in which it reframes its characters in terms of who’s good and bad is brilliant. After the incredibly emotional first half of “New Year, New You,” it only makes sense that the monsters in this story are humans at their worst and not something supernatural. The ending injects the story with a tense cat and mouse dynamic that helps power it through until its finish.
Into the Dark has also struggled to make its 80+ minute installments actually justify their runtime, but “New Year, New You” doesn’t struggle at all in this department. There’s more than enough material to last this story and at no point does it feel like the episode is padded for content. The structure and presentation of “New Year, New You” also feel the most like a feature film out of all of the Into the Dark episodes. This isn’t just an overly long episode that acts like a movie.
“New Year, New You” is a complex character study that explores the insecurities of all of these women, the dangers of manipulation through encouragement, and measuring yourself up to other people’s success. It’s a chilling story that only gets darker and more complex as it goes on. It also doesn’t shy away from an incredibly bleak ending that makes her point with eerie poignancy. Takal doesn’t try to overextend herself and this boiled down take on friendship and jealousy gone wrong is arguably the best addition of Into the Dark to date and hopefully just the start of Takal’s filmmaking career. With episodes like this and last month’s “Pooka!” delivering impressive, psychological pieces of horror, hopefully Into the Dark can carry this momentum and turn out another winner with Valentine’s Day.
‘Into the Dark’s’ “New Year, New You” premieres on Hulu on December 28th.
Reviews
‘Cape Fear’ Redefines A Cutthroat Classic & Turns The American Dream Into A Psychological Nightmare [Review]
Hollywood has been stuck in a trend where a recognizable property — any recognizable property — holds more value than an original idea. This has led to a trend where a slew of acclaimed films have transitioned over to television and become limited series, because why not?
Which has led to a very mixed bag of results that’s usually viewed as a hollow exercise in IP renewal that’s become a growing cliche that’s something to mock. Dead Ringers, Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent, and even The Birds are just some of the most recent titles in the movie-to-limited series pipeline. Admittedly, this formula can still work. It just needs to actually have not only a point of view, but a point, otherwise it’s destined to disappear into the vast streaming abyss.
Cape Fear definitely has a point of view and is well aware that it’s the fourth proper adaptation of this story — fifth if The Simpsons’ masterful “Cape Feare” parody is included. It’s an adaptation that’s not only aware of its past’s baggage, but intentionally embraces it and uses it to its advantage. Nick Antosca’s Cape Fear is so exciting because it functions as a remix of every version of this story — the ’60s film, Martin Scorsese’s ’90s remake, and John D. MacDonald’s original novel, The Executioners — to create this glorious amalgamation of the narrative. It’s not unlike what was done with Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series and how it remixed the breadth of Thomas Harris’ works and their cinematic adaptations.
This approach is most effective when certain iconic scenes from the ’90s film are recontextualized and given to different characters in order to make grander thematic statements. It’s a really striking approach that reflects the generational ripples and overlap between these adaptations, yet it’s never distracting or ostentatious to anyone who is experiencing this story for the first time. It helps this series feel different from the deluge of forgettable adaptations that are flooding the market.
On paper, Antosca is the perfect showrunner to tell this story. He has an impressive body of work to pull from that includes horror series like Channel Zero, Hannibal, and Brand New Cherry Flavor, but also lots of true-crime titles like The Act, A Friend of the Family, and Candy. This series falls squarely within these two extremes as it blurs the lines between these genres and styles of horror storytelling. It’s Big Little Lies on bath salts. Cape Fear perhaps doesn’t need to exist, but it’s still a hell of a terrifying experience that has something timely to say.
Horror is full of stories in which one bad day is all it takes to break someone and turn them into a completely different person. Cape Fear isn’t doing exactly this. It’s more of a psychological waterboarding until the target’s sense of self is eroded to rubble. However, it takes the kernel of this idea and expands it onto the pristine ideal of the picturesque American family. It plays with the self-aware realization that the stories we tell are not necessarily what we think they are.
It’s a story about forgiveness, salvation, and revenge that blows up the Bowden family when a violent offender, Max Cady (Javier Bardem), is released from prison and systematically sets his sights on the people he holds accountable. Anna and Tom Bowden (Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson), the married couple who represented his case in court, receive a rude awakening when Cady’s psychological torture tour begins. Cape Fear, as a property, is most famously known for being the ultimate cat-and-mouse psychological thriller. This rendition culminates in such an explosive climax that’s right out of a slasher film.
Antosca was involved with an unproduced Friday the 13th reboot draft back in 2015, and there are certainly moments in which Max Cady moves with the hulking intensity of Jason Voorhees. So much of what makes all this work rests on Bardem’s complex performance. He’s very careful not to just copy Robert Mitchum or Robert De Niro’s versions of Cady, while he also taps into a terrifying intensity that feels completely different from what he brought forward with No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.
Apple TV’s new series also introduces a mental injury to Cady that adds psychological fractures that pull him between different versions of events as he struggles to grasp the truth. It’s an element that’s not exactly necessary and often feels like a convenient obstacle that can be activated whenever necessary. However, it allows for some creative visual flourishes and more opportunities for Bardem to get lost in Cady’s complexities.
Opposite Bardem’s Cady, Adams and Wilson do some of their best work as Anna and Tom. Anna is much more front and center than Tom, and Cape Fear is really Adams and Bardem’s time to shine. Wilson still does amazing, understated work, especially whenever the rug gets pulled out from under him regarding someone in his family. The visceral, brutal violence that Cady introduces to the Bowden family hits hard and highlights the anger and intensity that’s fundamental to this story.
What Cape Fear does best is its enlightening deconstruction of the ideal American family, how much work it takes to preserve such a pure thing, and the lengths that people go when they feel like the sanctity of this union is under fire. All it takes is for one of these foundational pillars to weaken before the whole unit becomes compromised. It moves the damage and pressure from one family member to the next as everyone struggles, and it’s unclear what will be left of this family when all is said and done.
This dynamic makes Cape Fear’s story so much more layered and interesting than if the series were just focused on Cady, Anna, and Tom, rather than making their children as much of a priority. Each member of the Bowden family experiences their own obstacles and arcs, although Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack’s (Joe Anders) storylines are often the most grating. It all boils down to forgiveness, identity, and wanting to be perceived as the person we think we are, versus how we’re viewed by the public, and the dangerous dissonance that can exist between these separate selves.
These ideas are at their most potent when Cape Fear taps into the growing paranoia that bubbles up to the surface and becomes unbearable, so that even the littlest action is triggering. These moments are usually captured through a more erratic filming style that ramps up the tension for both the characters and the audience, unsure of what will strike and when.
Cape Fear never struggles to create uncomfortable setpieces where the anxiety just crescendos and hangs over the scene. On this note, the series’ musical score really captures the perfect aesthetic. It immediately evokes the suspenseful power of the previous Cape Fear films whenever Bernard Herrmann’s virtuosic original theme kicks in. It’s magic every single time.
Antosca delivers an exhilarating update to a classic thriller that pushes its source material to exciting, new places that justify its existence. It’s an exciting story that’s full of terrifying performances and cataclysmic consequences. Admittedly, Cape Fear could have been shortened to eight episodes rather than ten. There are a few plot threads that feel unnecessary and artificially expanded upon, but every episode is still an adrenaline-pumping experience.
If nothing else, it reminds audiences why Cape Fear is such an evergreen story that’s lasted the test of time and will continue to unnerve and get under the skin of whole new generations.
The 10-episode series will make its global debut on June 5 with a two-episode premiere on Apple TV, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 31, 2026.
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