For work reasons or simple interest, one can be aware of what moviegoers and colleagues from the film press think about the platforms of streaming. And it is common to find Internet users who put the catalog of Netflix movies and series to fall from a donkey. Yes, there is a lot of crap between their titles, but probably no more than what one sees in their competitors and, of course, not to a greater extent than what was released on the billboard. In addition, that they look for us in other places as risky projects as Dark (Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, 2017-2020), I’m thinking of quitting (Charlie Kaufman, 2020) or New cherry flavor (2021).
The latter is the recent miniseries created by the Americans Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion to adapt the homonymous novel by Todd Grimson (2011) and, at the very least, it must be said that it offers some very disconcerting moments.
‘New cherry flavor’, the weirdest thing on Netflix
Not that the two filmmakers have based their still brief writing career on bewilderment, but rather on something that tends to score a goal in that goal. And, from the very name of East thriller delusional with traces of terror, your shot is already on the net. Nick Antosca has written scripts for three episodes of the hypnotic Hannibal (Bryan Fuller, 2013-2015) and the one with the soulless movie The forest of suicides (Jason Zada, 2016) with Sarah Cornwell and Ben Ketai, and has created the anthologies Channel Zero (2016-2018) and The Act (2019) with Michelle Dean.
Lenore Zion, meanwhile, has collaborated in the writing of twelve scripts for Ray donovan (Ann Biderman, 2013-2020), nine of Good conduct (Blake Crouch and Chad Hodge, 2016-2017), one of the aforementioned Channel Zero and three of Billions (Brian Koppelman, David Levien and Andrew Ross Sorkin, since 2016).
Of which there is no doubt is that New cherry flavor It stands out as one of the strangest Netflix series that we can see. Its base is metacinematography, the cinema that talks about cinema, as an excuse to gradually develop a strangeness that is established in the supernatural. The elements of it are of witchcraft, hallucinatory, funereal fantasy or even impossible transits that it becomes a more or less subtle surrealism and reaches the bizarre in its contemporary sense.
A fever dream come from the mind of a madman
There is here a certain spirit of the David Lynch of Mulholland Drive (2001) and, at times, it even reminds us of Bliss (Joe Begos, 2019), only that it is much less unpleasant than such a film, for which too great an effort is not required. On the other hand, it raises questions very early with strange appearances and images, and they are added as their only eight chapters follow one another.
The plans of New cherry flavor they are detailed when the team of filmmakers of Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion deems it appropriate in a composition, at the beginning, very serene, that changes in a brusque but not shocking way as events become rare; and it diversifies and accelerates somewhat because it adapts to what Lisa Nova lives, the exasperated protagonist whom Rosa Salazar (Alita: Battle Angel) interprets very wisely.
Not less than that of their companions for their respective characters, almost always ambiguous. The Lou Burke of Eric Lange (Lost) could not be more credible, the confidence that Catherine Keener (Captain Phillips) infuses the enigmatic Boron and nothing bad can be pointed out from Roy Hardaway, Code, Christine Woods or Jeff Ward’s Mary Gray (Agents of SHIELD), Manny Jacinto (Bad times at the El Royale), Hannah Levien (The Magicians) and rookie Siena Werber; nor of the other dramatic constructions.
Ultimately, one continues to see chapter after chapter of New cherry flavor on Netflix for the good work of its cast and because, although it is not a wonder, his eccentricity, his twisted sense of humor and his unpredictable quality They make him seduce him and want to know where the hell this feverish dream from the mind of a madman is headed.