Anna Review: AMC’s New Science Fiction Show is like a darker, deeper Star Trek plot

A dystopian science fiction series about an easily communicable disease that disproportionately affects adults and plunges our reality into chaos hits near our home in 2021. Anna, the latest streaming gambling game AMC Plus has acquired internationally, starts strong with the eerie timeliness of this stimulating event. The mysterious disease manifests itself in red bruises and wounds and kills anyone once they reach puberty. The surviving children organize into roving gangs that ransack and pillage, united in fear of what will eventually happen to them when they grow up.

It’s an act from that Original series Star Trek Follow “Miri”, but without the same momentum. Between the starkly split timeline, the sparse development of its central character, and the inconsistency of the series about how awesome it wants to be, Anna grabs the audience early and then loses this grip.

Author Niccolò Ammaniti adapted his own novel from 2015 Anna, in 2020, for the miniseries. He had been filming for six months when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. Giving writers control over the adaptation of their own material into a new medium can have several options, and Stephen King’s involvement in his recent television adaptations is a useful example. When a writer goes back to established characters and comes up with new arcs and endings to highlight his work, he has an opportunity to highlight topics and ideas that were already in the text. A story could find additional resonance in another form, such as the well-cast current version of King’s The stand Did. Alternatively, a writer rethinking his or her work may highlight the shortcomings, boredom, and self-centeredness that Even already there what happened to King’s chaotic adaptation of Lisey’s story. It’s a real touch-and-go offering that can end in creative triumph or disaster. Anna ends with a little of both.

Anna takes place in Italy, where 13-year-old Anna (the steely Giulia Dragotto) takes care of her younger brother Astor (Alessandro Pecorella) in a remote forest with barbed wire and rags. The red virus pandemic has turned the world into an increasingly derelict, empty place. Anna warns Astor about monsters, ghosts and giant birds to protect him and give him a childhood she never had. “The outside is all black. You’re all dead, Astor. You and I live because the forest protects us, ”says Anna. While he stays in her shelter, Anna searches the surrounding neighborhoods, churches and shops for groceries.

The danger is everywhere, both internally – when Anna starts menstruating her life is literally over – and externally in the form of the twins Mario (Danilo Di Vita) and Paolo (Dario Di Vita), who easily and enthusiastically indulge in cruelty . Bully Angelica (Clara Tramontano) increases the danger as miniature tyranine, who practices a cult of practically cannibalized children. And even the friendly Pietro (Giovanni Mavilla) becomes a problem when his easy flirtation with Anna distracts her from responsibility for Astor. Anna splits his time between the threats of the present and recurring flashbacks to Anna and Astor’s memories of their mother Maria (Elena Lietti), who kept a diary for them with instructions on how to take care of each other and stay safe in a world without adults was dying.

This division of attention allows for some context and contrast to show how a seemingly well-functioning society collapsed so quickly and thoroughly. The flashbacks leave a trail of breadcrumbs: Anna’s parents argue about how to take care of her when infection rates rise, coverage of the spread of the disease, overhead scraps of conspiracy theories. (Think of Cittàgazze in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series.)

But this approach also means that each episode struggles to find the rhythm forward and often stall when it comes to connecting the child Anna and the teenage Anna. Viviana Mocciaro (as the younger Anna) and Dragotto have similar admonishing looks, but the miniseries waits too long to explore their common personality traits and how the former grew into the latter. Although young Anna is present on the series from the start, in the final episode we see in detail for the first time how she took care of Astor in the absence of her parents. This material would have had a more basic feel to Anna if it had been provided earlier, and without it the older version of the character feels a little weak. With that vacuum at the center of the show, the glaring aspects of each episode stand out instead.

Children can be monstrous to one another, and Anna indulges in the possibilities of savagery caused by growing up too early. Episode after episode offers new villains to Anna as the threat of the Red Virus looms. Children cheat, hunt, and abuse one another. The trio of little girls who are disguised as Disney princesses and also gleefully torture Anna are particularly angry. It is difficult to watch Anna being locked up and led around on a collar and leash. Holding a hostage naked and in chains, Angelica then casually talks about burning someone alive and eating their ashes, works because Tramontano is so cool about playing the character’s almost sociopathic selfishness. Anna swings for the fences by racing from one ghastly development to another, and although the series is initially one hook by The Lord of the Flies Duality, it gets really dark, very quickly.

But at some point, so much ferocity acts like a cover for a plot that feels stretched out over six episodes. For book readers, giving up certain characters through the series, adjusting different motivations, and ending up could feel like betrayal of the source material’s messages about forgiveness, violence, and survival. The extremely altered tenor of the last scene of the series completely postpones the novel’s originally somber conclusion, and the novel’s ambiguity could have been a stronger path to the end.

It certainly fits better with the source material’s general fascination with the illusory nature of happiness and the warnings to avoid the cruelty of an unsentimental reality. But other changes in Anna open new narrative doors. The decision to reveal the backstory of one supporting character per episode features portraits of the myriad of ways people, either selfishly or humanistically, reacted to red fever. There’s more than a hint of exploitation and even fetishization in a subplot with a character who may have been judged and disapproved in history for their physicality, but Roberta Mattei’s thoughtful, vulnerable performance is well worth watching.

A kind of loophole in the spread of the mysterious red fever disease opens a fascinating path forward. And visually so much of the unpredictability and wickedness of Anna is brought to life in the series’ thrilling chases through abandoned churches, overgrown squares and collapsing bridges; in the demanding chants and desperate cries of wild children; and in the rituals of decoration and adornment that children use to ward off growing up.

Ammaniti, who also directed all six episodes, has an eye for wasteful old age and an understanding of how to build tension on the screen. An animated 2D sequence of giant monsters stalking through a field to hover over a lonely boy, mixes media in a fascinating way and brings to life the thickly scribbled, completely black illustrations of the fantastic creatures that Anna Astor describes as formidable enemies .

During each episode, Anna alternates between extremes of light and color, from the pitch-black interior of a boarded-up shop that has been turned into a dungeon, to the exuberant explosion of rainbow-colored fabrics hanging between the walls of a palatial mansion. The willingness of the series to adopt surreal, grotesque and wonderful images somewhat compensates for repetitive scripts and the constant fading out of the protagonist. But at the end of the series, these latter elements are more important than the visual interest found in a blinded human skull, a pile of stones on a grave, or the inky midnight blue of a paint container used to symbolize children’s fidelity.

In AnnaIn the second half of the episodes, which put Anna and Astor’s bond to the test and it becomes clear that neither the older sister nor the younger brother are as clearly defined as to resonate with their separation, the flaws in the graphics are the Series over-characterization approach becomes clear. Anna is often gorgeous in his Return to Oz aesthetic, but looking for more than one finish style here is possibly as unlikely as a cure for red fever.

Anna Premiere on AMC Plus on November 18, with new episodes streamed every Thursday.