Monday, October 30, 2017

Show Review: Lore - Season 1 (2017)



As my last post for October 2017, I think that talking about a show adapted from one of my favorite podcasts is somewhat appropriate.  Lore - Season 1, which is currently only available to watch with an Amazon Prime subscription, is a show that tells true stories that contain strange, mysterious, and horrifying elements, and since this is now a visual medium, the show also uses actors to depict roughly half of each 45 minute episode.

If you are at all familiar with the Lore Podcast, then there is a good chance that the show will fit in very well with what you come to expect.  Each episode is partly narrated by Aaron Mahnke, which I recognize might be a turn off if you are already one who does not either like his voice or the cadence of his voice.  But, since he does not narrate the entirety of the episode, perhaps this could be used as stepping stone?  The rest of the episode is a mix of on location film and photography, and live action reenactment.

Something else that might seem familiar to listeners of the podcast, are the titles of episodes like "They Made a Tonic," "Black Stockings," and "Unboxed" were already episodes.  So, why, you may ask, redo a 25 minutes podcast as a 45 minute streaming visual episode?  If you already know the tale about Robert the Doll, why bother watching it in a new format?  Because "Unboxed" in particular, is a really creepy episode and the actors and writing for those sequences is spot on brilliant!  The way that the actor-portion of the episodes is done more like a traditional TV show than reenactments from ghost hunter shows.  These episodes add a new element that podcast episodes make more difficult.

Season 1 is only six episodes long, which is kind of short, but if you consider that Amazon was testing the waters to see if a longer Season 2 could be something that they would consider in 2018, then it seems perfectly normal from a company's perspective.  And I could probably break the season down and talk about each episode, but I would rather just recommend the entire season if spooky stories that are taken from history is your thing.  Both Conklederp and I watched the entire season in three days, at my behest that we only watch two episodes per night in order to unpack each one and not be overloaded.  Also so that we were not out a show that we were 99.947% sure that we would love.  Which we did, and we are eagerly awaiting Season 2 next year.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Heavy Iron is Made


P.S.  The episode "Unboxed" genuinely gave me chills in the purest sense of the phrase.

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