To Turn Yourself In or Not?

Hey Mom! You get to read another post for the class that I watch Netflix for and write posts about.

Seven Seconds is a suspense-filled show about a 15-year-old boy that is critically injured in a hit and run. Turns out, he ends up dying, but I haven’t made that far yet. The person who hit him is a cop, and this leads to a cover-up. The show is set in Jersey City. I’ve only watched the first episode and I’m hooked. I really think you would enjoy this show because it’s another show about cops and solving crimes, which in this case is a hit and run that turns into a murder too. It really reminds me of Chicago PD, which we both used to watch together every Wednesday (I think, maybe it was Thursday).

The characters and the police department remind me of Chicago PD. The police officers in the first episode remind me of the main characters in Chicago PD because you have the bad cops in both. The officer that committed the hit and run is new to the department and he called his boss when he realized what had happened and his boss told him to drive away and that he’d take care of the evidence. I don’t know the names of the characters yet, but the man who hit and ran didn’t want to leave and then wanted to turn himself in after the fact, but his boss told him that it wasn’t a good idea. The officer was white and the boy that was hit is black. Therefore, the boss told him that if he turned himself in, he would be hit with the crimes of Ferguson and the other crimes that have occurred with white officers and black victims.

Something else that reminds me of Chicago PD is that the building the officers are in in both shows looks dated. They both seem to be older buildings and haven’t been updated recently. They aren’t the new buildings you see in shows like Law & Order: SVU. The woman working in the front in both shows is also an older woman who looks kind of grouchy. I know in Chicago PD the woman who works in the front is sort of grouchy before the cops get to know her and once they get acquainted with her she is really a nice person who is there to help. I feel like the woman in Seven Seconds is probably like this too, but I’ve only seen her in one scene with the new officer who hit and ran. In that same scene, I noticed that the walls were a dull green color and the lighting was also pretty dark. This reminded me of how the building looked dated like I mentioned before.

What is interesting with this show and is different from the other shows we’ve watched is that you get to see the lives of not only the cops investigating, but also the attorney’s and others working the case, the victim’s family, and the family of the officer that committed the hit and run. At first, it was confusing because I thought the attorney for the suspect was the boy’s mom that is hurt. They both looked really similar and it wasn’t until about halfway through that I finally realized the two were separate people. As the show went on though, it became clear that the two were not the same person. They weren’t driving the same vehicles, one was at a bar while the other was at a worship practice at a church, and then they were finally in the same scene together.

Thanks for reading another post mom, I hope you enjoyed it!

1922: Killing is Bad, m'kay?

1922 is the latest Stephen King adaptation to come out this year and the second to be released and distributed by Netflix. Directed by Zak Hilditch, the film follows the James family as they endure internal fighting in 1922, leading to father Wilfred and his son Henry (Thomas Jane and Dylan Schmid, respectfully) murdering Arlette, the family's unloving wife and neglectful mother. Without getting into spoiler territory, the rest of the film details the effects the murder has on the family, leading to complete misery.
In a year in which It was very good, Gerald's Game was very good, and The Dark Tower..... was a movie, I think 1922 takes the cake and is also one of the better King adaptations of the past 30 years, maybe all time. While I don't think the film holds a candle to King's best adaptations, I do think it is easily on of his ten best.
All of the performances here are terrific, especially Thomas Jane. Jane was previously in another King adaptation The Mist and now returns to give the performance of his career. Even though his character is a cold blooded murderer, Jane is able to give his character s strong level of likability and sympathy. Dylan Schmid's performance as the son Henry was also great, especially considering his role had to have the most range associated with it. Schmid has to go from innocent quiet farm boy to selfish mean spirited in the blink of an eye, something a young actor like himself pulls of quite convincingly. To round out the cast is Molly Parker as the cold Arlette. Parker is also fantastic here as she is terrific at playing such a soulless, selfish, unlikable character. She's so unlikable that it doesn't surprise me that the two guys wanted her dead.
The atmosphere of the film is also terrific as the film feels very eerie and tense throughout. This is a combination of the directing, the solid musical score, and the setting. A horror film set on a mid American farm is nothing new, but the reason for that is because it can be so effective. With the score, it sounds eerily similar to The Shawshank Redemption (ironically another King adaptation), except there is something much darker and sinister going on with it. You can just tell listening to the music that something bad is going to happen. I think the score played a big part in making the film as good as it was. Finally is the directing by Hilditch, who clearly had a good vision for the story and what he wanted to bring to the table. Instead of directing it as a straight horror film, Hilditch decides to film it more as a drama-psychological thriller that definitely helps to distinguish itself from other King works as well as the other horror films to come out this year.
The final thing I strongly want to focus on here is the fantastic themes of the film. Even though what Wilfred and Henry do is completely wrong, they still do have actually decent reasons. Not only is Arlette the definition of a woman you don't want to be a mother or wife, but she was going to uproot the family to the city, destroying Wilfred's livelihood and ruining Henry's relationship with a farm girl which clearly is more than just a fling. On top of all of that, neither character is inherently a bad person. That all said, the murder destroys their lives as Wilfred begins to slip into madness and Henry life is ruined as he falls down a path of crime. What makes this all the much better is that they both get away with it in the end. It really is great to see a movie that deals with murder and is bold enough to say that maybe going to jail isn't the worst consequence of murder. This is all summed up by Wilfred at the end of the film with his final lines being, "In the end, we all get caught." He might not have been caught by the police, but he was caught in a much darker, moral way. So many films romanticize murder making it look like nothing. This is a film that decides instead to show what murder might actually do to someone psychologically.
It is a horrible thing to take another human being's life, something that is against every human law this Earth has ever had. It is never okay, even if you have the "best intentions." Murder is something you'll have to live with for the rest of your life, behind bars or not. To my future child, it is never okay to kill someone, no matter what. To finish with a quote from Clint Eastwood's Best Picture Winner Unforgiven: "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."
Anyways, if you get a chance to check it out, I highly recommend it, especially with Halloween just around the corner.