Danish director Kasper Møller Rask may have been born after the initial run of David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS (Rask born 1993/PEAKS airing 1990), but he’s one of the few to successfully pick up on the propulsive combination of narrative fog, deliberate pacing and creepy anxiety that helped make Lynch’s first season mesmerizing.* A small town story of teen abduction and disappearance, it even takes place in the ‘90s (see title), and largely concerns a hunt for a second local teen who’s gone missing. Already hounded by the mother of the first missing boy, a local policeman is in over his head when this second boy vanishes. Filling the gap is his own son, the younger sister of the latest missing boy, and another teen pal employed at the local video store/hangout. Period detail and social interaction all spot on; the cop’s son (Elias Budde Christensen) a real find. And what a collection of horrors and horrible people the three searchers find living in the cracks of society around this town. (Makes you want to move to the city.) Made in eight episodes (the first two a bit of a slow burn, but hang in there), each running only about 20" sans credits so you could binge it, but as it’s not one of those streamers that’s half filler, best parsed out. With a bit of unexpected emotion at the end; a very un-Lynchian move, but an effective one.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: No sequel announced, but for once, it’d be something worth thinking about. So many memorable characters here.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Partially, Rask pulls off the Lynch factor simply by not overdoing it. A trap Lynch’s many imitators, and indeed Lynch himself, all too easily fall into.
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