A Review of Netflix’s Into The Night

In quarantimes, sometimes you stumble on something easy to distract you from the real-world disaster outside your windows. So it is with Netflix’s recent addition of Into The Night. End-of-the-world science fiction is quite a mixed bag. Budgets are rarely up to the scale of a global apocalypse. I enjoyed Into The Night quite a bit. This Belgian production is very watchable, especially if you don’t think about it too hard.

Premise: Jump on a jet and head west to outrun the sun because if sunlight catches you, you’re dead. We don’t know why, it just does, okay? Cue the crazed Italian soldier with insider NATO knowledge taking over a plane with a bunch of people onboard to begin the race against sunlight. The hardy and not-so-hardy group of passengers striving to survive are a diverse group from several countries. A few will struggle for leadership of the band. Not everyone will make it. At least one person will ruin the quest for safety, but justice and injustice will be served.

Pros: This is classic out-the-frying-pan, into-the-fire stuff. Every problem demands a short-term solution that causes another problem and the clock is always ticking. Season One of this series reminded me very much of The Langoliers.

Remember that Stephen King story from Four Past Midnight? Remember the limited TV series where Bronson Pinchot played the weasel you loved to hate? Wasn’t that fun? This is, too.

Into The Night is based on a Polish Novel, The Old Axolotl by Jacek Dukaj. What the six-part series gets right, I’m going to attribute to the author. For instance, yes, when the oxygen masks drop, the air supply doesn’t last long. It’s only meant to buy time so the pilot can get to a lower altitude. Such details, the interpersonal drama, and a glimpse of passengers’ back stories are the quality stuff. Jason George, of Narcos fame, must be the other power behind what’s good about this show.

Cons: There’s not much to complain about unless you’re some snobby film critic who writes for Slate. The audio is in English. Shut off the subtitles because the difference between the dialogue and what’s printed on screen is a bit of a distraction. Sometimes the geography makes no sense. You don’t land in Nova Scotia and head to Alaska over the Pacific. Another hiccup: To bounce around the globe as they do, Canada couldn’t be that much bigger than Lichtenstein. It really isn’t, not by a very long walk.

But really, that’s picking nits and who cares? We’re here for the fights, twists and the reversals. This is fun bubble gum for the eyes. Even with a few flaws in logic, the premise is a great big idea: The sun will kill us! Stay in the dark! Out fly the spin of the Earth and race the dawn! And, holy shit, what now?!

So many apocalyptic movies are done so badly, this is better than most by far. I would say it’s all well-acted, too. Pop the popcorn and enjoy. Each episode of Into the Night will fly by.

~ I’m Robert Chazz Chute. Besides killer crime thrillers, I write apocalyptic fiction. My end-of-the-world books are This Plague of Days (trilogy), AFTER Life (trilogy), Amid Mortal Words, All Empires Fall (anthology), Citizen Second Class, Robot Planet, Wallflower (time travel) and the Ghosts and Demons Series (Haunting Lessons, Death Lessons, Fierce Lessons, and Dream’s Dark Flight).

Please check out all my books at the links down the right side of this blog.