‘The Crowded Room’ Reintroduces an All-Too-Familiar Twist with Adequate Emotional Depth
The Apple TV+ miniseries isn’t as smart as it wants to be, but it’s far from being as awful as critics say.
How much time needs to pass until a twist that’s been universally known in pop culture (and recurring somewhat frequently) for decades can be used again? That’s perhaps the most interesting question Apple TV+’s latest psychological thriller miniseries, The Crowded Room, raises during its 10-episode first season. It's an indication of what to expect from a show whose biggest draw is a central mystery (forbidden by the network to talk about in detail), not only blatantly evident from the get-go but also solvable with a simple Google search.
Yet, I'd argue if you can somehow avoid spoilers, restrain from googling the source material that inspired it, and go in watching it completely “blind,” you might find it as entertaining as I have. I know that's not exactly a great selling point. And what I'm about to tell you regarding its premise and first half won’t sound good either, but there are a few aspects (the exploration of trauma, for instance) that actually work in The Crowded Room — which made me not regret spending ten hours with it after a rocky start.
The pilot begins with an attempted murder at the Rockefeller Center in 1979, where Danny Sullivan (Tom Holland), joined by his friend Ariana (Sasha Lane), opens fire at a man walking towards the subway. As he misses the target, Ariana takes the gun and fires multiple shots before disappearing. The target survives, almost unscathed. Danny is arrested for attempted manslaughter and kept at the police station. Asked by an officer to help interrogate the suspect, Rya Goodwin (Amanda Seyfried) sits down with Danny to untangle the motivations behind the shooting. Speculations between Rya and the police lead us to believe they might've caught a serial killer. However, Danny can't seem to remember the details of the incident or the target’s identity. And Ariana is nowhere to be found…
This is a very "true crime-y" setup that somewhat misleads the audience about the kind of story they’re about to watch unfold in ten hours. The Crowded Room does that a lot in its first half — introducing multiple distractions to make us pay attention to the wrong details. During the interrogation, we go back to the beginning to learn about Danny’s troubled childhood with his abusive stepfather, Marlin (Will Chase), and her loving mother, Candy (Emmy Rossum). The plot quickly detracts from the initial murder, and we suddenly find ourselves watching a largely different show that has little to do with the crime it began with.
Unfortunately, that hazy writing doesn't do much favor to the story's consistency and its vaguely defined characters. With each episode, we get more and more fresh faces who often take over the entire plot, stealing and redirecting the focus on their own arcs and making little sense of how they’re connected to Danny's attempted murder. But as the series progresses, we find out that’s all by design. They meant to do that. They meant to act illogically and stupidly at times since that’s all part of creator Akiva Goldsman’s vision — even if it makes the show frustrating, tumultuous, and chaotic rather than gripping. However, being all over the place will make sense once the “big twist” is revealed midway through.
Before that revelation arrives, anybody who's ever watched more than a few psychological thrillers will know exactly what it is. It simply can’t be anything else that would justify the poor writing that prefaced it. Although it takes way longer than it should, it’s relieving that Goldsman discloses it halfway through when there’s still time to explore its consequences in depth and show how it drove Danny to the point of attempted murder.
It's after the twist is known when The Crowded Room delves in to examine its possibilities. There's value in how the series attempts to tackle and dissect something that's usually the endgame to many similar stories. By that point, though, there might not be a way back to take all of what we witnessed as seriously as the writers wanted us to initially. Nonetheless, the show suddenly becomes engaging again. If nothing else, the confirmation of its mystery and the possibilities it might hold is what drives the story (and us) forward, even if that comes with a price.
And that price is that The Crowded Room is unequivocally dominated by its plot rather than its characters. No matter how hard the actors try (Amanda Seyfried and Jason Isaacs especially), their characters can't become more than cogs in a wheel. They’re simply tools in service of telling a story that’s clearly considered fascinating, shocking, and brilliant by its writers. Unfortunately, it isn't. But that doesn't mean there aren't any meaningful and intriguing parts of it whatsoever.
There's a depiction of abusive relationships (and their effects) buried deep inside the plot portraying how and why people choose to remain in these painful acquaintances despite knowing how toxic and detrimental they are. The show also adequately addresses trauma and dissects all the wrong choices these victims make repeatedly. And with its slightly simplistic (and sensational) approach, The Crowded Room manages to break down where all those choices might lead if the victims don’t get the right support and the professional help they desperately need.
Unluckily for Tom Holland, though, the actors in supporting roles (from Sasha Lane to Emmy Rossum to Christopher Abbott) all fare better than he does with his challenging leading role. Given the complexity of a character like Danny, Holland seems lost when he's supposed to showcase something more profound than the shy, introverted, and scared teenage boy. He simply isn't experienced enough to pull off a performance that other actors have already done way better in the past. (One particular comparison comes to mind from the last six years, but mentioning the actor’s name would be spoiler-y).
With all that in mind, I'd still say that fans of the genre will find bits in The Crowded Room that are worth seeing. But it's hard to deny that the miniseries would've worked much better in a more concise manner (instead of 10, six episodes would’ve been plenty enough) with a plot less reliant on mystery and more character-driven.
Since my last newsletter, I reviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt at doing some Dad TV with FUBAR (my father actually loves the series) for Paste Magazine, and I also shared my opinion on Apple TV+s surprisingly fun dramedy Platonic for Den of Geek.
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