The Spanish Harvest Netflix in 2022 he began with ‘El páramo’, an estimable film but that gave the sensation of running out of ideas for a long time before the final credits appeared. His next proposal made in our country is ‘Fair: The darkest light’, a horror series in which the platform has high hopes. It is not for less if we take into account that behind her are Agustin Martinez (‘The hunt. Monteperdido’) and Carlos Montero (‘Elite’).
Its first season -I already tell you that it is not a closed series- will arrive on Netflix this next friday january 28. It will be then that everyone has the opportunity to see the first eight episodes of ‘Fair: The Darkest Light’, which I have already had the opportunity to see. The baggage is quite uneven, since an attractive mystery is posed and it has the right rarefied atmosphere to enhance its more sinister side, but in return It does not measure up in aspects as essential as the script and its characters.
A poorly mixed cocktail
Intensity is one of the main features of this series, seeking at all times to provide the story and the images with the gravity necessary to immerse the viewer in suspense around this ritual sacrifice that has taken place in a small Andalusian town. However, ‘Fair: The darkest light’ does not seem to be as interested in this more general tragedy as the great impact it has on a family in the town. The parents of two teenagers have disappeared and are involved in what has happened.
From there, a series is created that is always based on contrast, since the two sisters are very different, something that will become more and more acute as the episodes go by. In addition, their personal dramas will collide head-on with the investigation surrounding these mysterious events. In its favor, it should be noted that ‘Fair: The darkest light’ never hides that there is a vital supernatural component behind everything, since it is not interested in playing with the doubt about whether the belief of that sect is founded or not.
The problem comes when handling those suggestive ingredients, opting to play with a mythology that often leaves the viewer with the feeling of dizzying the partridge. There it could be argued that he does it to give his characters a little more weight, especially the protagonists played by Carla Campra Y Ana Tomeno, but there we have one of the great weaknesses of ‘Fair: The darkest light’, since the Netflix series never ends up getting us to really connect with them.
And it is not for lack of trying, since one of the main dramatic axes of the series is precisely the relationship between them and how it evolves due to the way in which they are affected by what happened. The series always tries to find support or emotional motivation that it serves as a narrative engine, but there it almost always turns out to be somewhat flat, as if it simply wasn’t capable of transferring its ambitious intentions to the image.
unsatisfactory
Something similar could be said of the suspense part, since teverything related to research is somewhat monotonous. It is not that it falls into the unlikely or does something especially wrong, it is simply something that is there and adds little to the whole, since the great hook ends up being the suspense. What exactly has happened, how has this situation come about and how will it all unfold.
There ‘Fair: The darkest light’ works better conceptually than in execution, since his way of delving into the mystery ends up being somewhat inert, like the enormous amount of nudity in the series. What they want to convey and the different symbolisms it handles is clear, but there is a long way to go to integrate them satisfactorily into the story. In the end, they contribute something in terms of thinning the atmosphere posed by their directors, but it ends up falling into the repetitive when that step forward had to be left to be fascinating and that we could not stop seeing what happens on the screen. Some powerful image does leave us, but the support is missing so that they are nothing more than sparks without continuity.
That leads to ‘Fair: the darkest light’ ending up being more satisfactory when it tends more towards the exhibition, especially that fourth episode that takes a look at the past. The curious thing is that it is then when he gets the most that feeling of progression that in the part of the characters that is currently located, he never gets to feel. The mystery is posed, it is “adorned” with a solvent technical finish and then it does not stop taking false steps until it closes everything with an outcome that does invite wanting to see a possible second season, since then it will be necessary to be more direct from the first moment.
In short
‘Fair: The Darkest Light’ is a missed opportunity to bring forward a Spanish horror series that really hooks the viewer. Striking ingredients he does handle, but then the mix he makes with them ends up being frustrating more times than it manages to grow the curiosity we have when we start watching the series. All in all, it is better than another proposal in a relatively similar line such as ‘Paraíso’, but it is far from being the best possible version of itself, but simply one that is really worth it.