The Lost Room

[alias_sqbr]

I just finished watching the miniseries the Lost Room, after Cam bugging me to for months.

It was great, but is unfortunately one of those slow burn "What's going on?" understated stories which only really sounds interesting if you get spoilers. Here's a relatively spoiler free version, but it's cooler than it sounds: There are seemingly ordinary objects imbued with strange powers, and people who will do anything to get them. Detective Joe Miller (played well by Peter Krausse) finds himself in possession of a key (The Key), and from then on his life gets stranger and more difficult and he is sucked into the life of an Object hunter.

It has a bit of an old school Twilight Zone-esque simplicity to it. The characters and writing are engaging, but not very deep and sometimes fall into cliches (not so much that it seriously bugged me, apart from any POC character working in a shop. They were pretty much all dodgy) But yes, overall, very good.

Here's the first ten minutes on YouTube (all the trailers I could find were either spoilery or actively misinformed)
Spoilery thoughts:

*******SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS***************

One thing I really liked is the fact that while The Objects aren't actively evil like The One Ring they still seem to have this overall negative effect on the lives of the people who possess them, even the ones who don't fall to the basic human desire for More Power seem to end up disconnected from their ordinary lives and left with nothing but the world of The Objects. This imbues them with a subtle sense of menace (as Cam warned me, you find yourself looking at pens suspiciously afterward) and explains why they've remained secret. (When I heard the premise I thought "Well then why don't the people who have these objects take over the world or become superheroes or something?")

I REALLY liked that he lost the key. It showed that he wasn't just "The Key Guy". I mean he ended up being a bit of a Gary Stu the way people just did what he wanted and he was able to achieve more than everyone else, but I'm handwaved it to myself by saying it was Destiny, his future Objectness rippling back through time to create itself. I also liked that apart from Kreuzfeld (and it was paradoxically his love that killed him), the bad guys didn't get punished. This is not a world that's fair or just, and I'd rather that be demonstrated by bad guys getting away with it than characters I like dying horribly (which did happen a bit but not too much)

Comments

[mattsmodernlife.livejournal.com]

I loved the Lost Room when it aired a few years ago. I don't remember much about it, though. Awesome that I'm apparently not the only person who's heard of it/seen it.

[alias_sqbr]

There's at least 3 of us! :)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

With ilumiari below, make that eight - my brother recced it to rabbit1080 and I a few months back, and lent us the DVD.

It's a good show, well cast :) Though it's added an odd slant to season four of House.

eta - I can't count... make that seven.

[alias_sqbr]

And noone's said they watched it and didn't like it :)

[ilumiari.livejournal.com]

Seb made me watch it last year, I really enjoyed it!