What follows plays out like a class demonstration in how to execute a thriller sequence. The mission? Simple: Shut down the generator, fix it, and start it back up. The risks? The steam could blow, the repairs could fail, the workers could die. The stakes? The future of the Silo. That’s all you need to know to enjoy the white-knuckle stuff that follows. Keep it simple, stupid.
What’s more, every individual step within that simple plan is described, depicted, and executed with clarity and verve. The show establishes the major players — Juliette, her boss Knox (Shane McRae), her apprentice Cooper (Matt Gomez Hidaka), and her colleague Shirley (Remmie Milner) — and gives them all easily understood jobs to do — Juliette IDs the problem and then descends into the steam hatch room to cool it down with a fire hose; Cooper reinstalls the repaired rotor blade he and Juliette remove; Shirley monitors the situation in the steam room; Knox watches over the whole thing, communicating messages from one person to the next.
It’s easy to understand where everyone is in relationship to one another in the space of the big machinery chamber. It’s easy to understand the kind of damage they’ll incur if things go wrong — from a fall, from getting hit by machinery, from drowning, from burning. It’s easy to understand how much time they have left, and to feel the tension mount along with them as that time ticks away faster than they’d anticipated. And finally, it’s easy to feel the same relief and triumph they do when they pull it all off just in the nick of time.
Meanwhile, the recognizable, analog, industrial nature of all the machinery — it’s all blades and bolts and pipes and valves and big steel plates — only helps us intuit exactly what could go wrong and how bad going wrong would be. This goes double or triple for Juliette, whose fear of drowning (presumably that’s how her mom and/or brother died) has already been established; Rebecca Ferguson’s guttural shrieks of terror as the water rises around her in the steam hatch chamber are convincing and effective.
Seriously, from top to bottom, it’s crackerjack genre filmmaking. It’s also a marked contrast from the main-character switcheroos that characterized the first two episodes. This one’s based on action, and the action is damn good.
I reviewed last week’s episode of Silo for Decider.
Tags: decider, reviews, silo, TV, TV reviews