Mild spoilers for Archive 81 to follow.
I recommend that you watch Archive 81 on Netflix. It’s got everything: cults, seances, people trying to raise demon gods by speaking in a foreign language while reading from a big dusty book, flashbacks to the 1920s, hallucinogenic mold paint, unexplainable conflagrations, brutalist architecture. It is spooky and campy, and at times genuinely scary. What it doesn’t have is good character motivation, a flaw that only becomes more apparent and more irritating as the series progresses.
Based on a sci-fi/horror/found footage podcast of the same name, the show follows the story of Dan, who restores audio and video footage and is hired by a mysterious company to restore a set of video recordings found in a fire. The footage was all taken in 1994 by a woman named Melody Pendras who recorded interviews with people who lived in an apartment building called the Visser in New York City, which later burned down, possibly with her in it. Her ostensible reason for this is to conduct a sociological study of a small contained community for a grad school class, but we quickly learn she has chosen the Visser because she believes her long-lost mother may be living there. In the present day, Dan restores the videotapes in a weird brutalist building somewhere outside of the city (for reasons that are just too confusing to get into here) and gets sucked into Melody’s story, dreaming about her vividly and becoming more convinced that he has to find out what happened at the Visser.
Laying it out like that, Dan and Melody’s motivations seem fairly clear. Dan is someone who professionally restores videotapes and is hired to do a job, for which he will be paid a huge sum of money. We also learn early on that his father, who died when he was a child, is briefly on the first videotape, giving him a personal as well as a professional motive. So far, so good. Melody’s motive at first seems similarly clear. She is basically shooting a documentary, which gives her a reason to record everything she sees. Her real motivation, however, is to find out if her mother lived or still lives at the Visser, so the documentary is really more of a cover. As the plot progresses we learn that Melody had a troubled childhood at a convent orphanage, where she frequently had a feeling she was being “pulled into another world,” something that often caused her to scribble black circles all over things (the nuns did not approve). As a grown woman, this is the reason she’s been looking for her mother - a lifelong vague feeling of discontent and wrongness she can’t shake even through the therapy she engages in with her doctor, Dan’s father. Melody’s motives are a bit more convoluted, but it’s clear enough why she begins the actions that carry her plot forward.
By the time we get to the end of episode two, neither of these characters has a sufficient or believable motive to be anywhere near this plot. Melody begins interviewing residents in the Visser, befriending a 14-year-old girl named Jessica, who has lived there her whole life and knows everyone in the building well (is this how apartment buildings worked in the 90s? I barely know my next-door neighbor and that’s only because he walks his cat in the hallway at night). Melody rapidly realizes that Something Weird is going on at the Visser. It also becomes pretty clear that her mother does not live there and maybe never did. The plot needs Melody to believe her mother might still be connected to the place so that there is a reason for her to stay at the Visser, but given that Melody never knew her mother (or her father, but she never seems to want to look for him because reasons?) it is hard to believe she has spent the first 25 years of her life without family but now is so desperate for answers about her origins she will risk life and limb to get them. I don’t mean to dismiss the need she feels, but there’s got to be a limit to what you’d be willing to endure… and by the end of episode two, this character should have well hit that limit.
Episode two ends with Melody sneaking down into the building’s community room at night, where most of the residents we’ve been introduced to are humming/chanting a creepy song/prayer while twitching and shaking in front of a creepy-ass demon statue. She tapes all of this secretly, so Dan sees the whole thing in the present day as he restores the footage. Everything that happens in the show from here on out is even more horrifying and alien than that (did I mention the demon mold paint?! ), and yet none of the characters ever walk away. Melody says she’s going to a few times but always finds a flimsy reason not to and even though Dan’s motivation becomes entirely about his growing personal obsession with Melody, it’s hard to see how having a crush on a woman he thinks died 25 years ago is enough to keep him in the game even as demons start reaching for him through his computer screen. Side characters aren’t spared, my favorite example being in the 20s flashbacks when a young woman applies to be a maid at a mansion and during her interview, the creepy demon statue gets delivered to the foyer and she thinks absolutely nothing of it, accepts the job, and later, of course, becomes a human sacrifice because of course that’s why the cult hired you, honey.
Ok, maybe I’m being a narrative grouch. I did enjoy this show and you should watch it and I could let all this go and just enjoy the ride if not for one crucial thing: this show is heavily inspired by and frequently references other 20th-century sci-fi media. It is all about stories; our characters are quite literally creating their own sci-fi/horror series. Dan’s best friend has a sci-fi/horror podcast, which is referenced multiple times. Before he took this job Dan was restoring a set of cinema reels for a Twilight Zone-esque series called The Circle. Melody is aware of the history of the Visser before she goes into it, referencing the cult that supposedly use to practice in the mansion the building was later built upon. She is an adult in 1994, meaning the X-Files and Twin Peaks are shows she is probably at least aware of. There is no reason for either of these characters to not recognize that they are being pulled into a dangerous and horrifying story and that the only way to save themselves is to run in the other direction as fast as possible. In fact, there’s every reason to believe that as adults who grew up steeped in sci-fi/horror stories they would be acutely aware that the narrative they’re finding themselves in is one that can only end in blood and death. I guarantee Dan and Melody have both read at least three Stephen King novels each.
There are only two types of characters that continue walking in the direction of the plot even after they’ve seen a psychic claw her own face off in episode four: heroes and psychopaths. If you’re a Big Damn Hero and you notice that a cult is trying to raise a chaotic demon god, you charge into the creepy building to stop it from happening and save the human race, your friends, your lover etc. If you’re a psychopath who is obsessed with something (power, money, another person, fame, chaos) you charge after the plot because you genuinely don’t care what the consequences are as long as you get what you want (and you probably have a really underactive fear impulse, which helps). Dan and Melody are neither of these, though the story tries to paint them as either obsessive or heroic at different points in the narrative, yet it is never believable or strong enough to work. Characters like Samuel (who is trying to raise the demon… for reasons?) or Father Russo (the Catholic priest who has figured it all out and is trying to save the world from the perils of a chaos demon from another dimension) would make far more sense as the protagonists in this story. Samuel is obsessive and power-mad and Father Russo is heroic and selfless, and their outsized personality traits fit this outsized narrative. Melody and Dan feel too small for this story, like two Bob Dylan fans that took a wrong turn and ended up at one of those Scandinavian screamo death metal concerts instead. You might be curious for the first five minutes but, c’mon. You know this isn’t your jam.
My final narrative gripe is that no matter how many seasons of this show end up getting made, I don’t think we will ever be given a clear reason for why people want to fuck with the demon god. In the 20s flashbacks, one of the characters makes a vague allusion to “saving humanity from itself” and “abolishing all hunger, poverty, war… etc.” but there’s zero reason to believe that this creepy-ass dude will do any of that. Even worse, there’s no clear reason for any of the characters in the 1994 timeline to want to pierce the veil between worlds and yank out a demon. Does he give you ultimate wealth? Eternal Life? A lifetime supply of Totino’s Pizza Rolls? No clue! We don’t even really know what the characters think he does, let alone what he actually does. The most specific piece of information we are given about him is that in his dimension he is “lonely.” Well, requiring a human sacrifice every time someone wants to hang out with you will do that.
Have I mentioned you should watch it? It really is a fun show to get stuck into on a cold winter night. But if you happen to be someone looking for strong narrative drive and clearly defined character motivation, this is not your jam. Watch Only Murders in the Building instead, spare yourself that face getting clawed off scene, and still get a show about murder in a New York apartment building!