Entertainment
How a Sherlock Holmes obsession and personal loss informed Issa López's 'True Detective'
In the thick of the pandemic, Issa López decided to test herself by writing a murder mystery. The screenwriter and director had been plugging away at drafts of scripts and was losing her mind a little bit, she remembers.
While other people might have turned to doing puzzles with friends, she decided to build one of her own. “I decided to tackle a challenge I thought was impossible,” she says. “I loved murder mysteries my entire life. I grew up with a truly not healthy obsession with Sherlock Holmes.” (When I ask what that means, she tells me to think of a tween girl with a “truly obsessive crush on a fictional Victorian cocaine addict.”)
“I loved murder mysteries my entire life. I grew up with a truly not healthy obsession with Sherlock Holmes,” says Issa López.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
López started to concoct a stew that combined her love of Holmes with some other pop culture fascinations, including the detective team in David Fincher’s “Seven,” the Arctic terror of John Carpenter‘s “The Thing” and a general interest in the real-life “unsolved mysteries of humankind.” She let it boil, and then put it aside. Then HBO called, asking her what she would do if she were handed the reins to the “True Detective” franchise.
The result is “True Detective: Night Country,” the fourth season of the series that premiered Sunday, which stars Jodie Foster and Kali Reis as detectives in rural Alaska investigating the circumstances that led a group of researchers to be found naked and frozen together on the vast and eerie ice. López directs every episode and is the creator and showrunner of this new incarnation of the series, which started with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson opining about the notion of time in the Louisiana heat (Nic Pizzolatto was the creator and writer for the first three seasons).
For López, who hails from Mexico City but is now based in Los Angeles, “Night Country” is both her biggest, most high-profile project to date and one that is deeply personal, with roots in the trauma she experienced as a child following her mother’s death. It’s an experience that has informed her work for years now, including her indie horror feature “Tigers Are Not Afraid,” a mystical tale about children caught up in cartel crossfire that became her calling card and prompted HBO to come knocking.
Working with López has been a unique experience for Foster, who says in a phone interview that she’s rarely collaborated with someone who has such a range of abilities — from the technical to the more intangible. “[She’s] just deeply emotional and articulate emotionally in a way that I’ve never really had with a director,” Foster says.
Before she was dealing with dead bodies and mysterious symbols, López made her name in her home country working in comedies, the most commercially viable genre when she started her career. But in 2009, when she tried to transition from the Mexican film industry to Hollywood, she found that comedies weren’t as popular as they had been. Her deal to come to America fell through. “I realized that the only way was to go back to my very, very, very dark, f— up roots,” she says.
López’s mother died suddenly when she was 8 years old. Not a violent death, but it was one where she never had the opportunity to say goodbye. She wasn’t even allowed to attend the funeral, the adults in her orbit thinking it would be too traumatic for a little girl to see her mother in a coffin. That lack of closure has followed her throughout her life and into her art.
Jodie Foster, left, and Kali Reis in “True Detective: Night Country.”
(Michele K. Short / HBO)
“Then you have this feeling, even if you know rationally that this person is dead and gone, a part of you is kind of expecting to find them around the corner throughout your entire life,” she says. “And I think that informs my storytelling — the sensation of the sudden loss of someone who is the center of your life is very much the story in ‘Tigers’ and is very much the story of ‘True Detective.’”
In “Night Country,” this manifests as a clash between Foster’s Liz Danvers, a pragmatist who buries her feelings of grief over the loss of her son, and Reis’ Evangeline Navarro, who wrestles with visions of the dead. After the mass of dead scientists are found in what López calls the “corpsicle,” Danvers and Navarro are thrust back into partnership to figure out what became of these men and how it relates to the death of a local indigenous woman and the local mine that activists say is polluting the environment.
López, a massive fan of “The Silence of the Lambs,” wrote the part of Danvers for Foster, and while Foster was immediately taken with the script, she wasn’t sure about taking on the role, concerned that she wasn’t quite right for it. Taking Foster’s concerns into consideration, López reshaped Danvers. “I’m not going to say this is one of the first times, but I feel like this is one of the best times of being heard,” Foster says.
The new version of Danvers that emerged was more of an “asshole,” López says. “It came so naturally, a lot of my friends were like, ‘Oh, now she feels like you.’ I was like, ‘Thank you, I don’t know if that’s a good thing.’” She has decided to take it as a compliment.
Initially, López had written Navarro as a Latina, like herself, but the more she came to learn about Northwest Alaska, the more she knew the series had to deal with violence against Inuit women. “The more I understood that, at least half of my detectives had to come from that background,” she says. “Because I’m done and I’m tired of police investigators that come from the outside figuring out the case of the murdered and missing Indigenous women.”
Because she started writing when COVID travel restrictions were tight, López’s initial research on the region consisted of immersing herself in TikTok and YouTube videos, listening to local radio stations and watching reality shows like “Life Below Zero.” As soon as they could, she and a small group of producers went on a journey to Alaska, specifically to Nome and Kotzebue, where they walked along the frozen ocean and met with residents. “We ate the caribou and ate the seals that they hunt as part of their culture,” López remembers. “Listen, I don’t eat meat, but I did eat meat with them.”
López says she never goes into projects thinking about the politics of them, but it became obvious that focusing on the clash between the Inuit community of a Northwest Alaska town and the white population was inevitable.
“Her worldview is very wide in scope, and I think it affects her personally, deeply,” says executive producer Mari-Jo Winkler.
López also didn’t approach this incarnation of “True Detective” with the intention of subverting the first season, but that happened as well. Instead of naked female corpses analyzed by two men, we see the inverse: two women inspecting naked male corpses. “Now that I look in retrospect, it’s so clear,” she says. But it wasn’t intended as “revenge.” It just happened naturally. “You don’t tell the story what it has to do, the story tells you,” she adds.
To write the series, Issa Lopez says she and some of the producers visited Alaska and spoke to native residents. “We ate the caribou and ate the seals that they hunt as part of their culture.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
López didn’t necessarily expect to direct every episode, but having come from the world of indie movies where she had a hand in all aspects of production, being involved every step of the way made sense both to her and her collaborators like executive producer Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning director of “Moonlight.”
Jenkins himself has directed an entire season of television with Prime Video’s “The Underground Railroad.” “It is grueling and yet it is also, when you come off the other side of it, one of the most satisfactory, one of the most fulfilling experiences you can have in this creative medium, and it just felt like Issa was ready for that because she is strong as hell,” he says. “Pardon my French, but a bad motherf—.”
Foster says that during shooting in Iceland, López, who is very funny, was beloved on set. “People just adored her and it made them work harder,” she says.
The, yes, very cold shoot was difficult but also beautiful, López says, remembering how they would pause shooting to take selfies when the Northern Lights shone above them. Still, she’s not rushing to make another project in those temperatures.
As for what López does next, that will depend on how “Night Country” is received, but she does have another television murder mystery in her arsenal. She’s gotten the bug for the genre and has been satisfied that, so far, no one who has seen the whole series has told her they guessed the twist.
“If you look at it, it is there,” she says. “I’m giving you enough so that when I give you the solution you don’t go like, ‘Oh, you tricked me,’ but you go like, ‘Oh, I didn’t see it.’ Because that’s so satisfying and that was exactly my ambition when I set out to write a murder mystery.”
It turns out, her pandemic gamble and childhood fixation with Sherlock Holmes paid off.
- PRESSURE
- Starring: Brendan Fraser, Andrew Scott and Kerry Condon
- Directed by: Anthony Maras
- Rated: R
- Running time: 1 hr 40 mins
- Focus Features
Our score: 3.5 out of 5
On the most recent episode of our “Back in the Day” podcast the crew and I took a look at some of the greatest war movies ever made. In doing my research I learned that there have been more then 5,000 feature films dealing with World War II alone. 5,000!! Some of them are regarded as some of the best films ever made (The Best Years of Our Lives, Patton, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan) while others I’d never seen. As Memorial Day rolls along this year we are treated to another one: Pressure.
The film opens on the aftermath of what can only be called a horrible tragedy. Overlooking the carnage, General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Fraser) can only curse.
Jump ahead six months where we meet British meteorologist James Stagg (Scott). Awaiting the birth of his child, he is summoned to meet with Eisenhower and his staff to forecast the weather conditions that will be taking place during an operation they are calling “D-Day.” Stagg continually butts heads with Colonel Krick (Chris Messina), whose method of predicting future weather from past events is not a practice Stagg embraces. The two continually clash, much to the chagrin of an increasingly agitated Eisenhower. Doing her best to keep the peace is Lieutenant Kay Summersby (Condon), Eisenhower’s aide and buffer. It’s not an easy job.
Well presented with an outstanding attention to detail, Pressure could be looked at as the prequel to Saving Private Ryan, which opens with the invasion of Normandy, while this film looks at the events leading up to that day. The cast is strong, with Fraser at his best when going head to head with British General Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis), whose “gung – ho” attitude robs Ike the wrong way. It doesn’t help that “Monty” keeps referencing that, unlike others, he has battlefield experience. He also throws “Exercise Tiger,” easily Eisenhower’s worse military chapter, out when it suits him. (NOTE: For those unaware, Exercise Tiger was basically a practice run for D-Day, with young soldiers taking place in a military exercise. However, due to poor communications, live ammunition was used and nearly 1,000 soldiers and seamen were killed.)
The film has it’s dramatic moments but it’s also anti-climactic because, while they continually stress that the invasion will take place on June 5th, anyone with any knowledge of history knows D-Day was June 6th. So when Ike asks if everything is good for June 5th, you want to shake your head and tell him “no, sir.”
That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the film. I did. When I was born, Eisenhower was president – JFK would be elected two months later. And it was a genuine treat to be sitting in the theatre with some of Eisenhower’s great grandchildren. It lent a nice historical aspect to the screening.
On a scale of zero fo five, Pressure receives ★★★ ½
Entertainment
Olivia Rodrigo’s babydoll dress is for the punks, not the freaks who ‘normalize pedophilia’
Some are calling the controversy over Olivia Rodrigo’s recent outfit choices babydoll-dress-gate, Olivia Rodrigo calls it “weird.”
The dress debacle kicked up in early May when Rodrigo released the music video for “Drop Dead,” in which she runs through the Palace of Versailles wearing a pink-and-blue ruffled babydoll set while singing about the intensity of a crush. Then on May 8, she wore a cottage-core pink-and-white floral babydoll dress with knee-high Dr. Martens during a live performance in Barcelona.
Rodrigo was drawing from subversive feminist and punk fashion of yore, but internet critics were quick to slam the “deja vu” singer, saying the ensemble was sexualizing child-like imagery. In an hour-and-a-half interview with the New York Times Popcast that dropped on Thursday, Rodrigo staunchly defended the dress and called the criticism disturbing.
“I have worn outfits that are maybe revealing on stage, like I’ve been on stage in a sparkly bra and little shorts — which is my right — that’s fun,” she said. “I felt cool and comfortable in that, and that wasn’t inappropriate, but me fully covered up in a dress that people deemed to be, like, childlike was inappropriate, and I think it shows how we really normalize pedophilia in our culture.”
Rodrigo further decried the criticism as rhetoric that girls are fed from a young age, “which is ‘don’t wear that, because then a man is going to sexualize your body, and it’s your fault’ — it’s so weird.”
Rodrigo said she didn’t think she looked “sexy” in the babydoll dress; she was going for a cool look à la Kathleen Hannah or like Courtney Love, musicians whom the pop star said are her heroes. Love appeared to defend Rodrigo on social media by resharing posts defending the singer-songwriter in since-expired Instagram stories.
“I just think if we start dressing in a way that’s like, ‘Oh, I don’t want some f— freak to think that I am sexy like a baby’ or some crazy thing like that, I think it’s losing the plot a little bit,” she said. “I’m very protective of younger women and girls, and I don’t ever want them to be fed that rhetoric. You shouldn’t be responsible for some guy sexualizing you in a way that was never your intention.”
Rodrigo’s third studio album, “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love,” which features hit singles “Drop Dead” and “The Cure,” will be released June 12.
The idea of a young, aspiring filmmaker running around their backyard with a low-quality camera and a gaggle of friends roped into performing in their latest project is nothing new. In fact, it has been a staple of popular culture for decades. That is what makes Kane Parsons’ debut online short, The Backrooms (Found Footage), especially notable. When it was released in 2022, it felt uniquely connected to that long-standing piece of American cinematic mythology.
The short opens with a group of kids on set, preparing to shoot another take for what is clearly a makeshift, shoestring-budget horror project. Then, the camera operator unexpectedly slips into another reality of sorts: a liminal space hidden beneath the ground where the crew was filming. As the story transitions from the real world into the “backrooms,” Parsons’ approach also evolves, moving beyond traditional filmmaking into something digitally generated rather than physically captured by a camera.
In hindsight, it plays as an incredibly loaded opening statement from the young filmmaker. The king is dead, long live the king. The era of kids running around their backyards trying to imitate the aesthetics of professional filmmaking has given way to a new generation embracing the possibilities and limitations of entirely different tools, such as Blender. Now, Parsons has partnered with A24 to bring that vision of horror’s future to the big screen with his debut feature film, Backrooms.
The result, while occasionally uneven, feels like something genuinely significant. It is a film that suggests the beginning of a new chapter for the horror genre, one shaped by creators who grew up with digital tools, internet culture, and a completely different understanding of what filmmaking can be.
TOP FIVE THINGS ABOUT “BACKROOMS”
5. Assured Direction
Kane Parsons is a young man, but he’s someone who has been telling stories within this exact narrative and tonal space for years now. That level of clarity and concentration is demonstrated in his debut film in spades. Working with cinematographer Jeremy Cox and editor Greg Ng (both of whom worked on Osgood Perkins’ films Longlegs and The Monkey), Parsons creates a visual language that often feels immersive and claustrophobic in equal measure.
The use of wide-angle lenses throughout is a great choice that serves to both accentuate the off-kilter nature of this world and showcase even more of production designer Danny Vermette’s remarkable work. Altogether, it does not feel like a film made by a novice, but rather one made by someone who is confident and in control of their cinematic craft. That is a testament to Parsons’ talents as a director.
4. A Very Good Script
The script for Backrooms, written by Will Soodik and based on the stories originated by Parsons and his YouTube body of work, is articulate, thoughtful, and incredibly well-constructed. As audiences have seen time and again with earlier attempts like Slender Man and Five Nights at Freddy’s, it is not exactly easy to translate what makes a lo-fi analog horror concept work in the digital world to the big screen without losing what makes it special.
But Soodik’s writing manages to let Backrooms have its cake and eat it too, maintaining many of the aesthetic and tonal choices that made those short films work so well while also delivering a much more traditional and compelling character-driven drama that ties everything together. For the first act and a half of the film, I was genuinely shocked by how well it managed to maintain this precarious balance. However, it was not quite meant to last…
3. Strong First Half, Lackluster Back Half
If I have one real critique of Backrooms, it is that the stellar first hour-plus of the film is severely bogged down by its final stretch. Without spoiling things, there’s a moment in the film where the baton is passed from one perspective to another, and while this initially seems to hold a great deal of potential, it ultimately leaves things feeling underdeveloped and uneven during the final stretch.
It also falls into the trap of attempting to explain a bit too much about the otherworldly horrors of the Backrooms in a way that only serves to deflate the terror-inducing awe of the concept while also raising even more questions. There are also some character choices that feel jarring and underbaked, making the whole thing ring just a little hollow by the end.
2. That Mid-film Setpiece
Just before that aforementioned perspective switch, audiences are treated to what has to be considered the centerpiece of the entire film: an extended set piece shot entirely in a found-footage style as a trio of characters enters the Backrooms. Everything about this sequence works, from the way the film builds toward it to the performances and the eloquent, highly effective blocking. All of these elements come together to create what is easily the strongest section of the film.
This is Parsons truly operating in his element, and it absolutely shows. The film is worth seeing on the biggest screen possible for this tour-de-force sequence alone.
1. Blending Formats
As the latest in a growing line of online content creators making the leap to the big screen with aplomb, Parsons’ Backrooms is unique in that it feels actively engaged in conversation with both present-day audiences and decades of horror influences. The film is modern in its conventions and the way it communicates with viewers, yet it is set in the ’90s and draws inspiration from projects such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Eraserhead, The Blair Witch Project, and even the more recent Skinamarink.
The result is a film that feels as though it is building upon both the foundations of the horror genre as a whole and the foundations of Parsons’ online work. Because of that, Backrooms is able to reach some genuinely impressive heights.
GRADE
(B-)
Kane Parsons’ Backrooms is an incredibly taut, suspenseful, and dread-inducing debut feature that promises great things from the young filmmaker for years to come. If the film had managed to maintain the remarkable balancing act it nearly perfects during its opening hour or so, it would have been a solid A in my book. As it stands, the final half-hour bogs things down and gums up the works a bit, but it is nowhere near enough to counteract all of the greatness the first half achieves.
Backrooms is occasionally great and consistently solid, more than deserving of every bit of the success and attention it is receiving.
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