Content Warning: This review briefly touches on the subject of suicide.
Is True Detective: Night Country dark? Exceptionally so. There have been spooky apparitions, violence, and a nightmare-inducing corpsicle to top it all off. Writer/director Issa López displays a competency in horror not to be trifled with. What could be seen as genre clichés—a ball rolled by an unseen force, a ghost lurking under the bed—never feel that way, thanks to an icy setting and Lynchian-inspired chills.
Believe it or not, the darkness amps up in True Detective 4×04. This time, it has less to do with physical horror and more to do with human darkness. Every character is on the verge of breaking or, in fact, breaks. It’s not an easy episode to watch, but that’s mostly because of its effectiveness. If you can watch True Detective 4×04 without feeling on edge, are we even watching the same show?
Characters Reach Their Breaking Points
If you’re in the orbit of Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) on Christmas Eve, you’re likely having the worst holiday ever. Chief of Polic Ted Corsaro (Christopher Eccleston) returns to transport the infamous corpsicle to Anchorage, and Liz isn’t happy about it. With her hands tied, she spends her time replaying the found-footage-esque cell phone recording of Annie’s last moments. The audience watches it almost as many times as Liz, turning Annie’s frantic whisper of “if anything happens to me…” equally sad and frustrating.
Liz spends the better half of True Detective 4×04 drunk and bossy. Despite being under the influence, her investigation skills and ability to “ask the right questions” shine. “You were a better cop than me,” Ted even admits during their booty call gone bad. Liz makes a break in the case—somebody cut the power at both the research base and the ice cave on Annie’s video—and sends a sober Navarro (Kali Reis) and Pete (Finn Bennett) out to do the job she can’t with all the alcohol clouding her judgment.
The Priors are also having a terrible Christmas Eve. Pete’s wife, Kayla (Anna Lambe), is fed up with his endless devotion to Liz, and Hank (John Hawkes) spends his evening getting predictably stood up by his Russian girlfriend. However, it’s Navarro’s storyline that is truly gutwrenching.
Navarro Takes a Major Hit
Although Liz has hinted at Navarro going rogue in the past, audiences haven’t really seen that side of her. For the most part, she remains poised, displaying only moments of controlled anger, if anything. However, when Navarro learns her sister left the mental health facility Navarro checked her into and committed suicide, it breaks her. It’s a slow creep that begins with her telling Pete she’s fine to her attacking three men in an all-out brawl. They get the upper hand, of course, and Navarro is more bloody and broken than we’ve ever seen her.
Still, her story keeps returning to the murder-suicide Liz discussed with Pete in True Detective 4×03. “You saw something in that room. It was a ghost or some kind of spirit,” she says to Navarro. While Navarro maintains she didn’t, Liz calls her a liar, which is pretty ironic considering she just ranted about how “dead people are dead” and “there are no ghosts” until finding out about Navarro’s sister’s death. It speaks to the complexity of the characters and adds to the frustrating mystery of what exactly happened on that day Navarro and Liz pulled up on the murder-suicide. Will we get answers? Probably. Just not in this episode.
True Detective 4×04 Is Just Plain Unsettling
Watching our main players reach their respective breaking points is A LOT. The episode itself isn’t necessarily action-packed, but by the end of it, you’re exhausted anyway. Whether Navarro can see dead people like Cole in The Sixth Sense is undecided. Like Season 1, True Detective Night Country screams supernatural, but also like Season 1, it could all be misdirection.
Liz’s encounter with Otis out at the Dredge makes him look like he just stepped off the set of a horror movie until we get a glimpse of IV drugs by his side. Regardless, Otis caps off True Detective 4×04 by raving about the titular Night Country. “He’s in the Night Country. They’re all in the Night Country now” is one hell of a line to end an episode on. Let it be known that True Detective 4×04 is one haunting piece of television.
True Detective: Night Country airs Sundays at 9/8c on HBO.
