REVIEW #18 Servant (2019-present)

Servant is a psychological horror television series directed by M. Night Shyamalan which follows Sean and Dorothy Turner as as they deal with their grief after an awful tragedy hits the couple. The family soon witness strange forces effecting their lives, testing their marriage and their sanity.

CAST & THE ACTING (9/10)

I think the acting in this series is brilliant, each character has so much depth and layers of emotion that are portrayed so well by the actors. Especially Lauren Ambrose who plays Dorothy Turner, she does amazingly well and showing the different stages of grief. Toby Kebbel plays Sean Turner and Rupert Grint plays Dorothy’s brother Julian Pearce. The pair brilliantly portray this brother in law relationship between the two characters which ignited the series with comedy, horror and emotion throughout the two seasons. Nell Tiger Free plays the nanny Leanne, whose innocence and faith is extremely frightening and times and Nell does well to get this across to the audience. So a strong score here!

PLOT & THE STORYLINE (8.5)

At first the plot is very strange, you notice all this weird, sort of supernatural horror occurring but you have no idea what is actually causing it, which I really liked. M. Night Shyamalan really gets the audience thinking and guessing about what’s going on and that’s what makes this a great psychological horror. I couldn’t stop watching it because I just wanted to know what was going on and how this storyline would play out. There is such a good dynamic between the cast and that really helps strengthen the plot which is why it gets another good score.

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS (8/10)

There wasn’t any special effects and the camera work was pretty simple but I think it’s that simplicity which helped keep that freaky nature to the series which always had me on edge. The dark and moody tone to the visuals also complimented the genre of the film and worked really well, especially when there is a core theme of grief and struggle in this series. So I do believe that the 8/10 is justified here because any strong use of special effects would have ruined it.

OVERALL (8.5/10)

I really enjoyed this series, the cast is brilliant and I was surprised by just how good the acting was from everyone involved. By the end of the second season you see the complexity of each character and you’ve almost learned so much about them that you can completely understand how they act the way they do. It’s a really good psychological horror and I never enjoy horror films or series I just think to many are so poorly made with a plot that has no substance but this couldn’t be further from that! I was pleasantly surprised and would recommend this to everyone! If you have Apple TV then for sure, give it a go!

Thanks for reading.

Callan