The Boarding School: The Summits It has become a curious phenomenon since its premiere in 2021 on Amazon Prime Video. Despite its obvious script and pacing flaws, the first season became an audience success. So much so that the platform decided to expand and deepen the story with eight new chapters. On this occasion, the argument returns to the boarding school and its intrigues. AND finally opts for a precise tone.
After the criticism that the previous chapters received for their inability to show a defined plot line, The Boarding School: The Summits explore suspense. And he does it with much more skill and good narrative decisions than his multiscreen debut. Even so, the series goes down a bumpy road again by trying to interconnect various stories with each other and provide its characters with new scenarios.
Of course, this is a risk. The Boarding School: The Summits bases its effectiveness on the script’s precarious balance between a hint of enigmatic depth and an entertaining melodrama. Also in the attempt to sustain an apparently convoluted story from a certain simplicity.
The second season retains the light-hearted, experimental feel of the source material, but explores the possibility of mature solidity. It doesn’t succeed every time — its big flaw is not finding a tone and rhythm — but it manages to hold up as a consistent narrative. In the same way as its version of Antena 3, The Boarding School: The Summits is a tour of two different genres that come together at different times.
On the one hand, a slightly gothic air that is more evident in its second season and from which the plot takes advantage. At the other extreme, his insistence on youthful identity and mystery as a background. Between both things, The Boarding School: The Summits traces the sense of confusion left by his first season and finds his identity. It is no longer a version of more successful material or a horror-tinged story with teenage faces. It is a curious hybrid between the mystery that surrounds the boarding school — converted for the occasion into one more character — and the connection with the latent darkness. One that manages to achieve in its best elaborated moments but that is not always understandable or linear in the lowest.
A journey towards a series with his own face
The Boarding School: Black Lagoon it became a considerable success from its premiere in 2007 until its end three years later. The combination of suspense, teen storylines, and an unashamed emphasis on pure entertainment made the production a guilty pleasure. In fact, most of its 7 seasons they became audience phenomena. Even more, the unique interplay between suspense and later, romantic-leaning drama came to create its own style. For your cancellation, The Boarding School: Black Lagoon It was already part of the history of Spanish television.
For its international version with The Boarding School: The Summits, Amazon Prime accentuated its youthful product persona and added the perception of latent twisted mystery. The result in its second season is an increased feeling of claustrophobia. If in the first season, the boarding school — as an institution — had the oppressive atmosphere of forced seclusion, in its new chapters it becomes more elaborate. The long shots of the desolate landscape or the whispered conversations. There is a constant perception that every student could be at risk or about to be in unknown danger. However, the hint game is not as effective as might be expected. Especially when the characters are blurred in the insistence of the script by the emotional darkness of the context.
With an obvious influence on series based on the perception of suspicion, The Boarding School: The Summits to the possibility of a progressive suspension. And that is perhaps one of the uncomfortable points about him: good part of the first six chapters are developed in the midst of multiple enigmas. And again, The Boarding School: The Summits he hints at a resolution — or at least, a definitive answer — only to come to another crossroads. With such a game — which ends up becoming a distracting element and, in the worst of cases, exhausting — production progresses with effort. The same goes for the characters. The changes in structure and meaning of their intentions end up turning them into a strange network of unresolved narrative threads.
The Boarding School: Las Cumbres, A badly planned game
In the end, what really seems to matter to the plot is the series’ ability to unsettle. Time and time again, narrative twists and turns lead to unexpected plot points, character behaviors, and stunning revelations. But the unavoidable question is to what extent a story can admit surprises and revelations that only lead to so many others.
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With virtually anonymous characters but its accent on the gothic mystery that is sustained by a better atmosphere, the second season of The Boarding School: The Summits attractive but confusing. Perhaps it is a harmless but trickster game of mirrors. Just as the source material was during its long run of success.