Lost and White Christmas had a gay baby named The Stranded

I usually review underlying social commentary and filming/directing techniques so my reviews mention other shows and lots of excitement about camera placement and editing.

Let's get it/

Season 1 of The Stranded aired worldwide in its entirety on Netflix on 15 Nov 2019 with 7 x 50 min episodes. It reminds you of Lost, White Christmas and Lord of the Flies all at once while still being fairly unique in this genre.

Lost is an American television show that aired 2004 - 2010 about survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island dealing with the Lord of the Flies narrative on top of everything getting weirder and weirder. Due to the time and place Lost as a series was coming from, the patriarchy in it makes the show almost unwatchable for me. So my first title for this was "Lost with less Patriarchy."

You can't help but be reminded of Lost when you watch The Stranded. You have an almost identical and equally pivotal scene of the main character waking up on the ground in the jungle at one point. You have the unwordly creepiness that can't be explained and the mysterious suspense wrapped around everything.

I'm not sure how much influence Netflix had over this series. The lack of product placement throughout was almost jarring to someone who has only seen Thai webseries before. The 24 frames per second vibe and scene changes dramatically split with relevant intriguing backstories were reminiscent of so many Western shows in this genre. Idk, it's so interesting to me, the points where Sukdapisit derailed from that. That's what I was looking for, broken tropes and throwbacks that have nothing to do with Western media.

During The Stranded I also found myself reminded of White Christmas, a short Korean series from 2011 about a group of students trapped at their elite school in the mountains in an avalanche over Christmas break.

There's nothing supernatural about White Christmas, it's purely psychological. The Stranded has a psychological vibe that runs deeper than the character relationships in Lost. The repeated filming of hot shirtless guys and lonely girls with fucked up pasts also were very White Christmas-like.

There's something that The Stranded, White Christmas & Lord of the Flies have that Lost could never. The way the characters react to being trapped on their own with no help changes whether you're writing adults or children into such roles. The internal war between despair, communism*, escapism and hope gets completely skewed and more so than when writing adult characters.

*communism in the desire to successfully work together. Quote from The Stranded; "We must cooperate. Work together and trust each other. That's how we survive."

A lot of these stories show how this kind of purely conceived idealism breaks down against the desperation to survive.

I can't leave out Krit & Jack in social commentary. I didn't want them to be token innocent queers in the background. Props to show how normal gays are to hets. So from a social standpoint, I'm grateful they were sexually active, depressing, and dangerously in love. They're not there to promote a harmless depiction of teenage boyfriends. They add to the whole way the situation of being stranded can carve out human ugliness on all sides.

In the West our need to strictly label genders and sexualities puts me in a difficult spot to describe what "girls" refers to in Thai media. But you will see it here. We're used to it more than the average American clicking on a foreign show on Netflix. The male characters who are there doing "girls" chores. I love that they're not trying to pass and that they don't even have to explain their existence. I love that they are just socially accepted from the beginning without it becoming a plot point. I love that you see the Thai thing where it's less about fighting to be trans than being trans and fighting for your personal gender's rights irrespective of their bodies' anatomies. But I still hate that these characters are minor and still mainly used to inject humor by their default flamboyance. I also wish there would be at least one transboy or nb person at some point in whatever I watch.

The setting from The Stranded creates the uniqueness and non-Western cultural framework that makes it special. The setting is more intense and beautiful than most things you will see in film. The ratio of camera time given to nature over characters is noticeably greater than many films set in remote locations. The intro's lens filter over the drone filming of the forests and beaches is so simple and so effective. You know you're looking at something that is ultimately skewed and that's thematically really important to remember from the beginning until the last scene.

The intro and the show itself have music that is arguably way cooler than what we usually see in foreign media. Passively, it's youthful and non-commercial. When it's used climatically it's a bit intense in a cliche way that I wish would just die in this genre.

Scene cuts come abruptly at times to weave together similar dramatic events been different characters. These types of situations make me so grateful to the writers for their timing of revelations and events.

The actors are all so so good. You never think they're faking anything and you become immersed in each of their fucked up lives. You want to see some of them rise up and some of them fall down where they belong but you're at the mercy of the story. To compliment both the writing and the actors, nothing feels forced out of character and so many points of interest are created between these characters in this story.

I really want to see everyone's theories on what's going on in the story. At first I thought ok, they're all dead and they don't know it. Now I don't know what to think but with what's happened, I just want Mark to come back so much<333

Thank u for reading x

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film study aspects of love alarm 2019

i really love anything with a fantasy or scifi element and also films made from webtoons. what made this a ten for me though was the cinematography and editing. >the creators are very fond of really beautiful almost still shots of the subjects. you notice this in the first episode when they show a slightly aerial view of the brick alley that plays such a prominent role in this entire drama. they didn't cut out the distractions in the foreground or resort to slow motion in these moments. as the drama goes on, you realize that these shots are so short that the scene cuts long before other films employing the beauty of these kinds of frames. >the other thing i wanted to mention is the extensive use of colour editing and light overlays. >the colour editing is nothing unique in itself except that i have not seen it applied to a drama like this. the memory montages of the main characters are always beautifully lit up, inverted, mirrored, vignetted, completely drained or saturated, etc. i colour edit myself so i did not see anything that made me say omf how the hell did they do that? but for what they did i truly appreciated the fact that it was such a unique feature of this show. >for the light overlays, you see this constantly in the form of incandescent digital circles and spheres forming around love alarm users. from the shell of my own experience, at first it felt like too much. but as my mind worked around it, it felt fresh because this particular style has everything to do with young video editors the last few years. the light circles play a pivotal role in the entire work, they remind you again and again that this is a very strange world compared to ours.>i can't not say anything about the actors. one scene in particular made me gasp i think. it's the scene where (ep 1 spoiler ahead) Sunoh is returning home from having kissed Jojo and he pauses in his yard. the lighting is perfect twilight. he stares across the expanse at Hye Yeong's bike looking pained and then Hye Yeong shows up next to it. Sunoh's eyes in that moment are just A+ 100, clap, crying & ok fingers emojis. >Sunoh's character is super interesting to me as well. the way he emotionally clings to both of the other characters especially. there's an innocence and curiosity there that the actor made come to life so well. >this is one hell of a Rare Ten for me.

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More than shirtless boys frolicking in the snow

I feel like this one will stick with me forever.

I don't think a lot of people would like White Christmas.

It's slow and dark.

There's no romance or intentional comedy.

It's shot in 60 fps.

It's snowing the entire time.

But I love love love this show. It's so good. 10/10 if you like slow, deep & psychological film with that weird nostalgia for the time it was set. It's 2019 now, so the clothes, phones, music, ways of interacting in 2011 become a feature you can't ignore.

Most epic scenes are followed by Arcade Fire, literally. That just seals it in that time period.

You also can't ignore the era back then that was shooting every drama in 60 frames per second. The hd soap opera effect with barely edited audio.

The characters are acted out brilliantly. I can never put my finger on why this film does so much for my interest. It feels like it could easily be a play on a stage. Like you are watching more of a play of dialogues and monologues rather than a film.

It's psychological and strange.

The question it explores the entire time is;

"Are monsters created or are they born that way?"

A boy enters a boarding school and finds a journal hidden in his room from the previous student.

That student had been driven to suicide by a group of students and one teacher.

The new boy plots revenge on behalf of the dead kid.

These characters stay behind at school during Christmas break.

The revenge kind of goes to hell when a serial killer shows up in the guise of a doctor whose car crashed.

They're trapped in the school for eight days because an avalanche blocks roads & phones don't even work.

There's not a single one of them who is mentally stable if not actually psychotic.

By the end I realized these characters and their dynamics around the concept of "trust" really affected me.

You see this struggle between hope, despair and escapism along with character developments that make it even more difficult to ever forget. I watched this two months ago and my mind still wanders to what happened with the kids in White Christmas.

The camera placements were so unique and these things are ultimately what gives psychological dramas their "feel." The snow everywhere was a huge part of the frames used for the isolation, awe and hopelessness felt by the characters.

The scene cuts into flashbacks felt painful to take in while watching the story unfold. To realize how fucked up these kids all are.

The characters are what makes this whole show great. They are almost slightly exaggerated into their traits and behaviours. Taking their emotions nearly too far in most scenes. And the quiet between those scenes is even more beautifully depicted. The actors made all of it seamless.

The ending of White Christmas is brilliantly dark, hands down. Endings have such a huge effect on the entire experience of taking in any series, always with the potential to ruin everything. The ending here ruins nothing and feels awesome to watch after all they had been through. For the mindfucks the entire drama delivered in every episode.

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