After
the heartwarming and uplifting third episode (still my favorite) of the new
2020 reboot of Steven Spielberg’s television series Amazing Stories, where do you go next? With the fourth installment, Signs of Life, directed by television directing
veteran Michael Dinner (The Crew) and
written by Once Upon a Time screenwriter
Leah Fong, the series shifts gears for something chillier and heavier than the
first three episodes offered.
Following
in the footsteps of Stephen King’s The
Dead Zone, the episode concerns a teenage girl named Alia (Sasha Lane)
whose mother Sara (Michelle Wilson) mysteriously reawakens from a six year coma. Amnesiac with no memory of her daughter, Sara
comes back to the living with a strange gift and an even more mercurial secret
mission she herself seems possessed by.
As Alia tries to piece together the events leading to her mother’s
peculiar behavior, a mystery man named Wayne (Josh Holloway) with an
unexplained purpose enters and forever alters the course of their lives.
Going
for a more sterilized look than the schmaltzier warmth of the previous episode,
Signs of Life might be the least
engaging entry in this new Amazing
Stories revival for having a premise we can barely keep up with or gain
concrete understanding of. Other than
something resembling another unique spin on the superhero origins myth, we’re
really not sure where this one is going with the exposition lasting up until
the very end. Where the first three
episodes laid out the rules clearly and quickly, this one isn’t sure where and
when to stop, leaving the viewer confused which I’m not sure was intentional.
Performances
by the three leading actors are good, with Michelle Wilson in particular making
the once animated maternal figure now monotone and robotic in her
movements. Most of the heavy lifting is
done by Sasha Lane who has to emote intensely for the camera, providing the
episode with a much needed dose of human warmth. That said, for all the tears shed on this
episode, something about it still wasn’t completely clicking with me and I came
away feeling frustrated by it.
Somewhere
in Signs of Life is a good episode
with enough intense acting onscreen to fill the piece to the brim with
emotional resonance. The ingredients are
all in place and promise old fashioned Spielberg cinemagic. And yet as it stands, it’s the one entry in
this new iteration of Amazing Stories that
left me feeling cold and flat. Overall
this has been a good new season of the revival of Spielberg’s show but I would
be lying if I said this particular episode doesn’t leave one feeling
underwhelmed.
--Andrew Kotwicki
