The Rig review: Prime Video sci

Amazon Prime Video has plunged into the waters of the North Sea to bring us the Premiere of The Platform (The Rig), his new supernatural mystery series starring lain glen (Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones).

The Kinloch Bravo oil platform, a creation inspired by the more than 180 platforms that extract oil from the North Sea in Norway and the United Kingdom, is not going through its best moment.

With awareness and environmental treaties, added to uncontrolled exploitation, the organization that owns the platform, Pictor Energy, is apparently in a limit economic situation. Although that, of course, will not be your biggest concern.

The crew led by Magnus (Iain Glen) are about to return to land for their well-deserved rest when a thick fog causes a chain reaction in which they will go from being cut off from all communication to being held hostage to an unexpected supernatural power.

David Macpherson, its creator and screenwriter, has transferred his childhood and his fascination for oil platforms and the strange events that his father, a builder of them, told him when he returned to land in a series of six chapters lasting just over 50 minutes.

A quite particular fascination, everything is said. These colossi erected in the middle of the sea have a lot to offer on the cinematographic level: claustrophobia or thalassophobia are the recurring ones, but Macpherson has opted for a rather simplistic science fiction focused on some unexciting “spores” on the seafloor.

A sea of ​​fears… and doubts on Prime Video

The Rig focuses all its efforts on the human component of Pictor Energy. The relationships between the crew will be the vehicle with which the entire plot will awaken and the one that will feed or destroy the loyalty of its components.

His characters play a tug-of-war in the job hierarchy pressing to return home to see their families. The family spirit of the crew, their seemingly unconditional support, is evident in the pilot episode; from there things get out of hand.

Baz (Calvin Demba) has been relegated from his return home by Fulmer (Martin Compston) for apparently operational reasons, but the latter’s relationship with the board only manages to further fuel the discontent of the rest of his teammates. Favorites? Let them tell Rose, the person in charge placed by the Pictor who has a relationship with him.

All your problems will literally be overshadowed by a dense fog that is followed by absolutely unexpected tremors that noisily shake the immense mass.

A bunch of alarms and red lights will start to go off on the control monitors. You know, you don’t have to be an expert in anything: when a red light comes on, things are not going well. And in The platform things go terribly wrong because there are hundreds of fires.

The supernatural turn will not be too hard and Baz will fall from the highest point of the platform. Hutton (Owen Teale, also of Game of Thrones), an old dog in the industry, will go into hysterics with the more than likely death of his partner while the rest try to discover what the fog hides.

His evolution, for the benefit, but also the detriment of his companions, is strangely positive. No one would survive a fall from that height, but something about Baz has changed. He begins to behave erratically, claiming that there is “something” inside him.

From here on, the characters begin to confront each other in exacerbated ways, with histrionically passionate reactions as if it were a soap opera.

Two scenes later and after the loss of some of those companions, those feelings will become superficial and they will greet the grim reaper as he walks through his cabins with the most absolute indifference.

Hutton, for example, becomes arbitrarily contrary to the nature of the character that we are shown in the first two chapters. His character is the main disruptor of the group: a necessary archetype, but blurred with the passing of the minutes.

His goal is to question the authority on board, to pit his companions against the power that blocks his return home. That is the theory. In practice, he ends up letting himself be carried away by a stranger who has just arrived to betray the same companions for whom he went crazy in his defense.

They will soon discover the existence of spores that look like life forms millions of years old that have recently awakened at the bottom of the ocean. These spores have taken control of Baz, but the mystery of loyalties will take on a Manichean turn about the good or evil intentions of its bearer.

Without intending to gut anything, with that music we will have to dance until the end of its chapters: discover who or what is good, and who or what is bad. The same initial fight of sides, but transferred to a greener plan.

The cast does a good job with the dubious intentions with which they paint their characters, the atmosphere and photography transport us to an attractive setting and the mystery is interesting enough to awaken some sparkles in the spirits of fans of the genre.

Even so, the cons pull too much towards the bottom. The platform has little to offer how to sneak in between the most anticipated series of 2023.

The lack of dynamism, the anarchic intentions of its characters and their emotional ups and downs, added to a soundtrack that merely accompanies the scenes, leave us with a not very stimulating science fiction and mystery series that we will doubtlessly retain in the memory of the next few years. months.