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This was the second episode of this delightfully wonky series I had the pleasure of watching. The episode Runaways review can be found here. The combined series in a nutshell? Think "Twilight Zone" or "The Outer Limits" complete with the classic feel of these older television shows. This particular episode, "Goings On" starts off in a seemingly normal household. Normal for this day and age that is. Two siblings bickering back and forth as family members often do. The idea? To paint a perfect picture of what would be considered normal family life. Normal in the sense that nothing unusual is - or has - taken place. Normal in the sense that brothers and sisters fight. Nothing supernatural or weird about that right? It's not until some strange "goings on" begin taking place that this episode really ups the ante. Power outage. Strange lights and sounds and then finally... an unwanted guest. In the blink of an eye "Goings On" just got one hundred times more interesting. Better yet? We're along for the ride. A fly on the wall. In true science fiction fashion, writer, director Rick Masi allows us to follow along straight until the weird conclusion. You think you know what's happening? Are you thinking you've seen this story before? Well reader... maybe you have... up to a point. My advice? Watch for yourself. This episode, along with all the other unrelated stories of the series, are free to watch. You can't beat that now can you?
"Goings On" is not the perfect picture of a web series. Even with the intended "old school" look and feel, there are some technical issues that really hurt the overall production. Some of these problems are the direct result of having no budget. Some are not, and could easily have been remedied. First and foremost... the unusual stuttering/blurring effect the episode had on my screen. The best way for me to describe it was to compare it to a frame rate drop. For almost the entire episode. This probably isn't exactly the case... but it sure felt like it. We could chalk this up to a cheaper camera being used. Or, possibly even an issue when rendering the episode. However you slice it... it was distracting. Very distracting.
Another slight problem was with the edits themselves. Bluntly? Some of them needed some tightening up. One particular example is our lead turning to walk away. We clearly see him actually walk off camera and then, the angle switches and he's still standing in the same spot. There were a few instances like this that truly could have been fixed... but simply were not. I noticed. I'm sure others will as well. The plus sides of the episode include some decent acting from the cast, more-so after the halfway point, and as I wrote above, an interesting ending. It would have been cool to have seen more physical clues scattered within the episode. Clues I could have looked back upon and thought: Yes. Now I see it. Even so, considering this is such a short episode, you don't really have time to think of such things. Still would have been cool though. In the end, I enjoyed this episode more than I actually thought I would. A trim here and an edit there, and I could easily have scored this a little higher. As it sits, "Goings On" is another solid episode worthy of anyone looking for a quick science fiction fix. A solid three stars. |