What Is the Story About?
Dark Matter, based on his 2016 novel of the same name follows Jason Dessen, a physicist in Chicago, who is sucked into an alternate version of his life, messing up his real life with another alternate version of himself. He is now all to fend for himself and return to protect his family from his alt-verse version.
Will Jason escape his alternate reality? Can he save his wife and son? Can he solve the mystery behind this alternate universe travel?
Performances?
With merely two episodes down, Dark Matter is clearly looking like a Joel Edgerton show. As a depressed father-husband-professor, the actor brings in right amounts of looming sadness and melancholy to the table as Jason. While his routine life gets to your limits of boredom, his alternate version’s abruptness and ruggednes showcases stark duality of the actor.
Jennifer Connelly‘s Daniela seems like a surprise package in the show, but the actor doesn’t have much of a chemistry with Edgerton atleast in the pilot episodes. It’s yet to be seen who will walk away with laurels as the show ends.
Analysis
Created by Blake Crouch and based on a 2016 novel that goes by the same name, Apple TV+’s Dark Matter is a genre-bending sci-fi-drama-thriller that follows an aspiring researcher cum physics professor Jason Dessen and his tryst with multiverse.
The opening sequence of Dark Matter makes for a peek into a normal family’s business. Jason, his wife Daniella and son Charlie go on with their regular day, where Daniella visits her art gallery, Jason drops his son to school on the way to his college. What seems mundane, dull and boring for the audience might hold significance to the storyline in the upcoming episodes.
Things take a drastic turn when Jason gets kidnapped by an alternate version of himself on his way back from a friend’s research grant success party. Jason is now transported to an alternate world, where Daniella and his 15 year old son Charlie doesn’t exist. Jason is a successful researcher and romantically involved with a co-researcher in the time-travel/universe-travel project he’s working on.
Desperate to return to his old reality and family, Jason has to now solve multiple puzzling scenarios and confront the scope of Multiverse. He also needs to save his family from the alternate version of himself – who could in all possibilities be harmful to them.
With just two episodes down, Dark Matter is off to a slow but engaging start. Although the theme of multiverse and time-travel is nothing new, Dark Matter makes for a show worth investing time on atleast based on the first two episodes. There are strong performers leading the baton, with multiple sequences of quantum science, atomic theories and laws of physics acting fulcrum to unexplainable scientific occurences in the show.
Dark Matter might not be completely thematically novel, but something about how it handles the psychology of its characters seem genuine. The writing takes its sweet time to peel off layers of intrigue and sure starts on a promising note.
In short, if you’re a sci-fi show junkie, Dark Matter could be the next thing you should be binging on. The show has everything to begin with for now, an intriguing premise, dull blue colours, effective performances and more of science and physics. Let’s see where the show moves from here.
Music and Other Departments?
John Lindley and Jeffrey Greeley’s cinematography is nothing exceptional, but routinely dull so far in the first two episodes. However, things are expected to spice-up in the upcoming episodes. Jason Hill’s theme music composition and the visuals for the credits are novel and interesting enough.
Highlights?
Cast & performances
concept
Drawbacks?
Routine multiverse concept
Lack of chemistry between leads
Did I Enjoy It?
Yes
Will You Recommend It?
Yes
Dark Matter Series Review by Binged Bureau
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