An introverted schoolgirl named Alice (Alina Gvasalia) He lives in a closed town near the cosmodrome, located somewhere in the middle of Silent Hill and Twin Peaks (this is in case the traveler suddenly goes towards the North of Russia). Throughout her life, Alice has had strange dreams about a terrible future that she cannot prevent. One day, a dead girl with her face cut off appears in these terrible images. When Alice meets a girl like this in reality (and who is still alive), she decides to save her from death at all costs. But owls are not always what they seem.
Previously. Alice’s Dreams was first shown at the Pilot festival last summer; we later included the series among the five best projects of the series and already praised the series for its cohesive atmosphere and style that covers the ambiguity of the script, and also expressed the hope that if the project is realized, the first episode will be reshot. It gets full green light. And so it happened. Over the course of time, “Alice’s Dreams” has become noticeably more collected (hence the bet): it has retained some looseness, but the atmospheric compensation in it has only intensified (although it initially pulled what was happening into positive territory).
For a full-fledged “Twin Peaks” punctuated by the corpse of a schoolgirl, there’s too much earnest sulking and too little soapy camp, coffee and cherry pies (though Angelo Badalamenti’s individual notes certainly quake in the jumble of local synths). And there are too few scary scares for a full-fledged Silent Hill (at least in the first third of the season). Still, the show manages to find its own way using signs seen in different places.
The cold interiors inhabited by cold people are reminiscent of the Scandinavian lifelessness in Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom. The proximity of the cosmodrome gives hope for mind-blowing science fiction coming from somewhere from the world of “Dark” (successful launch of a rocket in the first episode – why not science fiction?). The main character’s name, the black-red-white palette, and the regularly popping up chess images clearly reference Lewis Carroll’s literature. And among the witchcraft motifs that sound interesting in this context, we can recognize the work “The Witch” by Robert Eggers.
But just like a year and a half ago, we are in a certain state of uncertainty – where will this rabbit hole lead? It is easier to judge from three episodes released to the press than from a single pilot episode, but it is still difficult to draw specific conclusions, especially since it is typical for Russian TV series to start with health and end with peace. At this point, it’s clear: “Alice’s Dreams” has a good chance of being an impressive success.
Valery Fedorovich and Evgeniy Nikishov 1-2-3 Production studio, responsible for the show, have already several times (and without success) performed in the field of snow-covered mysticism: first Prygunov with the performance of “Dead Lake” by Roman, and then “Dyatlov Pass” (in principle with one of the best local TV series). In the first case, everything was wrapped in an understandable Scandinavian blackness, in the second it existed initially within the framework drawn by a real tragedy. In that sense, “Alice’s Dreams” has the potential to be something truly unique — God willing, it will have enough passion to make it to the finish line (good luck if the show spends all eight episodes just floating around in an imaginary haze) without straying from the hopeful path (for example, I did “Territory” in the first season, in the end it turned out that the promised Komi-Permyak mythology was very little).
But it must be said here that the track itself still runs the risk of not being what it seems – that is, not a fancy collage, but a soullessly constructed equation: the project was launched at a time when it had already started. It is necessary to trust the Russian Netflix Original. This is fraught with castration, with the deliberate erasure of any geographical feature. It looks like snowdrifts – these are also snowdrifts in Africa. On the other hand, Russian horror film is still an underdeveloped field and, in many respects, unfortunately unattractive. This low type of competition can be a good trump card. In short, sleep, my joy, sleep – the morning is wiser than the evening.