True Detective season 4 Reviews (original) (raw)

From the true-crime bleakness to the unnerving supernaturalism, there are more than enough chilling elements for our leads to chip away at over the next five episodes. With a snowy tundra and a severed tongue, True Detective Sundays are officially back.

It is The Wire’s Baltimore or True Blood’s Louisiana. By episode six, a bravura, nerve-shredding conclusion that stands shoulder-square with some of the best hours of TV of recent years, the Night Country will be somewhere you’ll never want to go back to – but somewhere you’ll never forget.

Season 4 is the best season of this series PERIOD. The acting, the writing, the location (!!), the production, the props...everything fell into place perfectly. The biggest bonus is that it was written by women, for women and p*ssed off Nic Pizzaman and his cronies; just the cherry on top! I'm so happy it's been renewed. I can't wait for more little boy meltdowns~it just brings me SO MUCH JOY in my heart!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The season has a forward drive that grabs you and pulls you through all kinds of heavy twists, ominous clues bordering on the supernatural, and bleak horizons, to the point where I ended up wanting more than the season’s six episodes. .... Foster is remarkable here, in ways that remind me of Kate Winslet’s turn in “Mare of Easttown.” It’s one of her most natural and charismatic performances. .... Reis is a great partner for Foster, and a revelation as an actor.

Riveting and eerie. [29 Jan - 18 Feb 2024, p.7]

The best it’s been since the triumphant first season, True Detective: Night Country is a thickly atmospheric, shiveringly sinister mystery.

For a tale set in such a stark location, Night Country is awfully busy, teeming with narrative complication and colorful characters. Text doesn’t always match up with place. But in that way, Night Country is also doing an interesting job of subverting expectations.

The mystery steadily dissolves into preposterousness, the characters sink into incoherence, and the horror isn’t original or evocative enough to carry things on its own. .... Foster, against all odds, finds ways to make Danvers seem human and even uncovers glints of humor in her; how she does it is a bigger mystery than those men in the ice.

This is the best season ever of this series. The first season in comparison is even average…

Issa Lopez's take on True Detective Season 4 delves into the heart of Ennis, Alaska with gritty realism, yet lacks the intense mystique of its predecessors. While the performances are solid acting wonderfully by Jodie Foster and Kali Reis, the plot feels convoluted plagued by bad CGI animals, questionable song selection, too much filler dialogue that doesn't add value to the plot, and a poor opening credits theme song performed by Billie Eilish does not feel like True Detective at all and more like The Thing. However, the stunning cinematography captures the bleak beauty of the frozen Alaskan landscape, but the pacing occasionally fails, leaving myself somewhat unsatisfied. Season four is a great attempt to form but falls short of the groundbreaking heights set by season one.

I don't think it's as bad as some people are saying, but it wasn't very good. I think for me it was pretty great episodes 1-3, 4 was kind of writing on the wall, then 5and 6 it fell apart. For these kinds of shows it's like you're weaving a tapestry, you have a bunch of loose threads and you need to bring them together by the end. Unfortunately the threads were just not all brought together, so many plot holes and head scratching moments, and the more you think about it the more issues you find. Navarro also deserved a better ending, she was my favorite character, the only person who had an actual set of cojones, goes through some serious ****, and then she gets ghosted? If anyone deserved a happy ending it was her, sheesh. This season should have leaned harder into the mysticism, would have made it more believable lol.

An interesting premise that almost immediately falls apart after episode 2. The premise is that a bunch of scientists die in suspicious circumstances in Alaska during their month of night. Is it a murder, suicide or something supernatural? Unfortunately it misses out on what made the previous seasons of True Detective so great. I'm not saying the supernatural aspects couldn't have worked in tandem with the detective plot lines the show is known for but it's been badly mishandled and it makes the show forgettable and a slog to sit thorough. And yes it does unfortunately work in a lot of current day politics into both the show itself and the plot.

Why would you give such an amazing show to a writer who evidently has no idea what made season 1 so great? Season 4 is corporate garbage, filled with cliche pop song covers, a story that goes nowhere interesting, and a double plot twist that's just incredibly underwhelming. The characters are very well written, but that's all!