A Murder at the End of the World

1. TV Series : 
2. A Murder at the End of the World

The Reel Review

C

A Gen Z amateur detective is invited to a reclusive tech billionaire’s retreat in Iceland. After a guest dies, she must race against time to prove it was murder and find the culprit before he or she kills again. Emma Corrin (The Crown) and Clive Owen (Children of Men) star, alongside series co-creator Brit Marling (The OA), who also co-directs this whodunit/crime mystery miniseries.

Corrin’s transformation from Princess Diana in seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown to a grungy Gen Z crime sleuth is probably the most impressive element of this stylish but frustratingly bland crime drama. It boasts a supporting cast that includes Harris Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness, Where the Crawdads Sing), Alice Braga (Queen of the South, The Suicide Squad) and Joan Chen (Heaven & Earth, Twin Peaks) among the guests, each of whom could be either the killer or possibly the next murder victim. The setting, a high-end hotel in a remote stretch of Iceland, provides some spectacular scenery.

But with flashbacks of our star’s prior sleuthing and relationship with her former boyfriend being infinitely more interesting than the unfolding present-day drama with wooden, one-dimensional characters, A Murder at the End of the World is ultimately a starkly gorgeous but starkly dull missed opportunity. It’s incorporation of the dark side of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is diminished by a ridiculous and frustratingly convoluted finale.

REEL FACTS

• A Murder at the End of the World co-creators and co-directors Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij also worked together in 2011’s Sound of My Voice and Another Earth, 2013’s The East and the 2016 Netflix series The OA. 

• Batmanglij and Marling even had a pink-haired character named Darby in the second season of The OA, prior to its cancellation.

• The hotel featured in A Murder at the End of the World is not a real place, although it was based on the real-life Deplar Farm, a 13 bedroom, off-the-grid lodge on the Troll Peninsula in northern Iceland, which features a geothermically heated indoor/outdoor pool with a swim-up bar, hot tubs, sauna and a steam room, heli-skiing and when they occur, the Northern Lights.