As is by now custom with Station Eleven, this episode (marvelously written by Kim Steele and directed by Lucy Tcherniak) is ripe with powerful details. Jeevan telling Kirsten everything’s going to be okay, and Kirsten replying that he’d just said “We’re fucked,” out loud. Jeevan “talking” to his dead sister, and the younger Kirsten showing her older self that this behavior started long before they staked out a cabin in the woods. Frank’s addiction, a direct result of war trauma, and Jeevan’s impatience with it: “We’re not heroin people. We’re barely even weed people!” The lone, Stand-esque voice on the television, fatalistically explaining how no one was prepared for “a flu that does not incubate, it just explodes…a one out of one thousand survival rate.” The terrific visual of the free-standing door that Kirsten passes through to access her memories. Older Kirsten crying at her youthful self’s optimism as she sings “The First Noel” to her new guardians. The passively suicidal Frank, who does not want to leave the familiarity of his apartment even though cold and starvation are now serious threats, refusing to vacate his home for the knife-wielding interloper. Kirsten’s adoption of the killer’s knife as a totem and her signature weapon.
It’s not a perfect episode; the costumes for Kirsten’s play are childlike only in the sense of adults trying to make something look childlike, and it takes you out of an important moment. But it’s a powerful episode nonetheless, in a series that seems to stack one such episode on top of the next. Like logs, or like bodies.
I reviewed episode seven of Station Eleven for Decider.
Tags: decider, horror, reviews, station eleven, TV, TV reviews