The first thing that surprises the series locked up with the devil of Apple Tv + is that it is the adaptation of a true story. Its premise — that of a convict who must win his freedom by extracting information from a serial killer — is necessarily unnerving. Also, dark and cruel. In the original story In With The Devil, by Jimmy Keene and published in 2010, the idea is grotesque and uncomfortable. For its television version, the dialogue between good and evil as an ambiguous moral substratum is more strange and devastating. The series questions, over and over again, how the idea of violence impacts our culture. But it also analyzes morality and the border of the questionable.
Of course, as a fictional narration of a real event, the series takes care that its version includes several dimensions of the truth. Through the formidable performance of Taron Egerton, locked up with the devil deepens the look on the evil of our time. Is Jimmy Keene really a tragic hero? The character seems to border on the complicated perception that everything he has done has been the product of the inevitable. But the script deftly handles that reflection and takes it to another dimension. Are we predestined to make mistakes of considerable gravity that push us to redemption?
locked up with the devil
“Locked up with the Devil” on Apple TV+ explores the idea of moral good from a rhetorical perspective. What would we be willing to do for freedom? The premise gets more and more complicated as the series digs deeper and makes smart plot decisions about a sinister ethic. A look at the fall into darkness of an ordinary man and the worst horrors that accompany it. Also, a precise game of the cat and he reasons between an unimaginable danger and its consequences.
For Jimmy, the issue is clear. He has had to do whatever it takes to survive, so he accepts that crime is part of his life. He does, with a pessimistic ease that Egerton displays with introspective silences and considerable internal tension. But for locked up with the devil He doesn’t make things so simple and walks other more sinuous and less clear paths. Is Jimmy really a criminal who took advantage of a twisted opportunity?
Locked up with the devil is a labyrinth with a painful exit
locked up with the devil suspends questioning as he delves into the character’s life. As a drug dealer Jimmy is a man who made bad decisions throughout his life.. But the argument explores the fact that, in reality, the concept of crime is a graduation of modern morality. In the midst of a tumultuous moral and personal defeat, Jimmy has the opportunity for a complicated redemption that also passes through personal interest.
Why does Jimmy make a dangerous decision? Just to gain freedom or also to somehow assume the possibility of being forgiven for a violent life? In Locked Up with the Devil nothing is that simple and especially everything becomes more complex as the essential point becomes more obvious. Can Jimmy get close to absolute evil without coming away with deeper wounds than he already bears?
But locked up with the devil it is also a mirror game in which a serial killer is a dangerous and latent trap. The series intelligently explores its central plot and turns the tension into something more elaborate. From a detective story (which it is) to the search for the root of fear. The series advances in a delicate and sometimes harsh balance between seemingly exclusive ideas. On the one hand, hehe perception of crime as a fact that accepts nuances, protected under the premise of unforgivable actions. At the other extreme, the insistent question about the price of freedom. A point that the series touches from several different dimensions and to which it returns to create the insistent feeling of half-revealed horror.
In the end, the closed doors to the shadowy places of the human mind
The plot moves between different ideas about violence and also supports its story about ambiguity. Once in jail, Egerton’s arrogant Jimmy receives an unsettling offer. He may be released if he manages to get sensitive information from a serial killer. An eventuality that includes, of course, being discovered or, in the best of cases, running a latent risk.
The script for Locked up with the Devil does not immediately show the consequences of such a one. In fact, Jimmy accepts without really knowing the hidden trap behind the possibility. Serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) is an enigmatic, menacing creature, and in the series, a reflection of something more disturbing. The criminal keeps secrets from him as a form of macabre manipulation and Jimmy must confront an interwoven web of violence and psychological cruelty. The combination gives the series a direct confrontation between two gazes on the inner darkness. At the same time, a disturbing and stark journey about what we consider good in a hypocritical age.
The biggest weight of the series is carried by the method that Jimmy finally decides to use to get information from Larry. The long conversations between the two are cloudy x-rays of collective fear, cruelty and contemporary pessimism. But also, a novel vision of crime that surprises for its eloquence. By the time Jimmy manages to understand Larry’s cruelest trick, the series will have reached its peak. At the same time, his most intelligent way of narrating an intellectual and ethical nightmare from a disturbing extreme. Perhaps his greatest success.