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Equinox is a new Danish drama on Netflix which starts in 1999, where and a large group of young male and female graduates head off on a party bus and disappear…
That said, the bus is still there, and the driver is unconscious, but where are the partygoers? People don’t suddenly disappear… well, not outside of spooky dramas, anyway.
One of those people on the bus is Ida (Karoline Hamm), older sister to Astrid (played in two timeframes: by Danica Curcic in the present day, and Viola Martinsen, aged 9), and while still a child, a young woman comes up to her and asks, “Do you want to know a secret? …Life is a big disappointment”.
Back then, before the news broke, Astrid sensed something was wrong, but today, she has a job as a local radio talkshow hosts… as if that would actually pay a living wage, these days. However, one night, she gets an odd call from an unknown man saying that there’s an alternate reality behind the current one, he states they need too meet, and that he was there…
At the end of the first episode, there’s still plenty of questions – more questions than answers, in fact, with a handful being found but still no news as to the whereabouts of the rest. However, while there’s an initial burst of interest within the first 15 minutes, it all rather meanders along aimlessly for the remainder… until we get a slight bit more intrigue by the end.
It still does rather feel like it’s just being weird for the sake of being weird, rather than actually contributing seriously to the plot – especially since all too often, it just borrows tropes from other offbeat spooky dramas and films.
As an aside, the premise feels a bit like ITV’s The Last Train (coincidentally, from 1999), but the flipside of that. In that series, a train full of people got stuck in a tunnel after an accident froze them in time, but then they emerged 50 years later. By then, the world was post-apocalypic. Okay, that hasn’t happened here, but it does make you feel that all of their friends and relatives would be feeling the same that Astrid’s friends and family, now.
I will check out another episode, but as such, I’m not really feeling it at this point.
UPDATE: I watched episode 2 and NOTHING happened until the end, when something slightly relevant happened, but then didn’t seem so relevant. I’m done with this. Whatever happened to them all, I really don’t care.
Equinox is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Netflix now.
Episode 1 Score: 5.5/10
Episode 2 Score: 0/10
Series Directors: Søren Balle, Mads Matthiesen
Producer: Dorthe Riis Lauridsen
Creator: Tea Lindeburg
Writers: Tea Lindeburg, Mette Kruse, Tue Walin Storm, Andreas Garfield, Jacob Katz Hansen, Bo Mikkelsen, Mie Skjoldemose
Music: Kristian Leth, Fridolin Nordsø
Cast:
Astrid: Danica Curcic
Dennis: Lars Brygmann
Ida: Karoline Hamm
Lene: Hanne Hedelund
Astrid, 9 years: Viola Martinsen
Amelia: Fanny Bornedal
Jakob: August Carter
Falke: Ask Truelsen
Henrik: Alexandre Willaume
Torben: Peder Holm Johansen
Mathias: Rasmus Hammerich
David: Zaki Nobel Mehabil
Doris: Tina Gylling Mortensen
Isobel: Susanne Storm
Adult Falke: Joen Højerslev
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.