Wayward Pines Seasons 1 & 2 (Spoiler Free)

Living with someone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes. Sure, the bills are halved, there’s someone to help tidy up the mess (isn’t there just twice the amount of mess though?) but you know what sucks? Having to watch your favourite TV Shows at the same pace as them. (I’m kidding, love you - by the way it’s your turn to wash up). It’s taken my husband and I months to work through a few small comedy shows, and we haven’t seen any dramas since Dexter. Anything I suggested I could watch alone was suddenly something he was interested in too, so I needed something fairly short and gripping, so we could watch it at a good pace. I needed my TV fix!

We’d burnt through Parks & Rec, The IT Crowd and 30 Rock, and we aren’t horror fans, so it was going to have to be a gripping drama for us. After a few recommendations, Wayward Pines sounded like the winner, so a couple of weeks ago we gave the first episode a try. Let me tell you now, this is a mysterious show indeed, and so I promise I’m going to keep in spoiler free, in case you’re interested in giving this show a go.

There are just 2 seasons out so far, and we managed to burn through them in 3 weeks. That’s pretty good going for us, I promise! There’s 10 episodes per season, and they’re your usual 45 minutes without adverts kind of length. I’m told in the opening credits that the show is based on a trilogy of novels by Blake Crouch. I’m so tempted to read these but I love the mystery of the show! I’m curious to see if they follow the same sort of format as the show. Does anyone know if each season is based on each book? I’m too scared to google anything…

You see, each of the two seasons has a completely different feel to it. Season 1 is a mystery for sure. The main character, Ethan (Matt Dillon) is an FBI Agent who wakes up in the town of Wayward Pines on a mission to find two missing agents. He soon realises there is something completely off about this town. Everyone is acting strange, and he seemingly can’t escape. I spent half an hour after each episode explaining my new theory on just what on earth Wayward Pines even is! 

Season 2 introduces a new host of characters, and at this point we as the audience know the truth about the town. Newcomer Doctor Yedlin (Jason Patric) quickly rises in power to become one of the most important members of the town, as a threat rapidly becomes more and more urgent with each episode. This season is much more thriller, and as much as I missed some of the mystery, there are still plenty of twists that had me quite literally gasping aloud.

On Twitter I think I summed it up pretty easily. Season 1 is ‘what the ****?’ and Season 2 is ‘they’re all ****ed’.

It’s not one of those shows you should research to see if you’d like it. Don’t even look it up on IMDB because you’ll see the cast list, and that tells you straight off how many episodes each character is in. Just take my advice. If you’re the slightest bit curious about Wayward Pines, give the first episode a try. If you’re not hooked after the first episode’s ending, this perhaps isn’t the show for you.

Oh, and screw this carousel, man. Wayward Pines isn't even a horror show but this carousel gives me the creeps and should probably get second billing in most episodes.

Have any of you seen the show? Or read the book? I’d really love to know your thoughts.

Review: Disconnect (2012)

One of my favourite things about co-running a movie blog is that family and friends tend to talk to me more about movies they’ve seen or ask me for recommendations. You’ll see quite a few movies I’ve reviewed that have been suggestions from my Grampy, but this one comes, funnily enough, from my boss! He’s not a movie buff at all but watches whatever movie Channel 5 or Film4 put on each Sunday night, and tells me about them on Monday morning in the office.

The latest one he recommended to me was Disconnect (2012). I’d never heard of it before but it starred one of my favourite actors, Jason Bateman, and with a topic so close to my heart I knew I was going to have to hunt this movie down as quickly as possible.

Disconnect weaves 3 separate stories all with one connecting theme. The internet is a dangerous place. Kyle (Max Thieriot) is a chat-room stripper who winds up in a heap of trouble when Nina (Andrea Riseborough), a reporter, pays to chat with him as part of a story and the FBI get involved. Two school boys, Jason (Colin Ford) and Frye (Aviad Bernstein) play a prank on another boy in their school, Ben (Jonah Bobo) by creating a fake Facebook account under the name Jessica. Their prank goes too far and Ben’s father Rich (Jason Bateman) investigates. Then we have Cindy (Paula Patton) and Derek (Alexander Skarsgard), a couple with marriage issues after the loss of their child, who become victims of identity theft.

It’s actually one of the scariest movies I’ve seen, but not for the generic reasons. There are no jump scares or murderers here, this is a drama, not a horror. But the fact is, this is real life. There’s no need for a warning of “these events are based on a real life story” because this happens every day in the real world.

I can’t confess to knowing anything about chat-room strippers, but we all know there’s a dark part of the internet out there. Again, I’ve thankfully never been a victim of identity theft, but my fiance had his Playstation account hacked and funds withdrawn from his bank account. That was scary enough! On a much smaller scale, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, I fell victim to the cruel school prank. Some kids wrote me a love letter from a boy I fancied and I fell for it hook, line and sinker. Social Media wasn’t a thing back then so it ended fairly quickly, but in this day and age, cyberbullying is a huge issue.  Aww what horrid kids! Give me their names, I'll sort them out! It's okay, I'm over it, I swear...*sob*

My only complaint about Disconnect would be that I was so fascinated by each of the three stories, I’d like them to be movies of their own. There’s just not enough time to connect with the characters enough in this format.

I think Disconnect is a must watch for anyone who uses the internet on a daily basis, especially parents who didn’t grow up in such a connected world.