The Twilight Zone reboot pulls Rod Serling into 2019 while avoiding nostalgia and fan service

Vulture

Jordan Peele is the natural heir to Rod Serling's legacy, as is apparent from his first appearance on screen as host of the CBS All Access revival series, says Matt Zoller Seitz. "He’s as skilled a comic actor as he is a suspense filmmaker — a baroque chameleon in Peter Sellers mode — and he understands how to channel Serling while inscribing the host-guide role with his own artistic and political signatures," says Seitz. "Impeccably tailored in dark suits, Peele speaks in an alert but inflected voice, as if possessed by someone else (with the initials R.S., most likely). It’s the voice of a master storyteller who’s so in control of both his physical and aesthetic aspects that he can make you laugh by playing things straight — and who appreciates the source material he’s reinterpreting yet isn’t shy about adding his own preoccupations." Seitz adds that the new Twilight Zone "never entombs itself in nostalgia or fan service and makes a point of pulling Serling into 2019. This incarnation is as of-the-moment as Serling’s original, from the more varied filmmaking styles on display to the use of profanity and frank sexual language. Most striking of all, however, is the show’s political vantage point: The new Zone looks at paranoia, class disparity, artistic anxiety, xenophobia, racism, and other hot-button topics from the perspective of an outsider who had to fight for his piece of American pie, in contrast to the more abstract, theoretical diagnoses and warnings of Serling, who was as woke as a rich white guy could be in the middle of the 20th century but was nevertheless incapable of taking a ground-level view of the problems his series identified, even in the imaginative safe space of The Twilight Zone."

ALSO:

• The Twilight Zone reboot is a calamity: "The first four episodes are all bad, a mess of sleepy conceits grasping toward topicality with on-the-nose dialogue spoken by boring characters"
• There isn't enough Jordan Peele on The Twilight Zone: "The Get Out and Us director hosts the CBS series, but he saved his best work for the big screen"
• All four episodes sent for review are bad, but the first two are terrible: The Twilight Zone is a limp mess that lacks things like surprises, scariness, originality and pacing
• The reboot is right at home: "The new season of The Twilight Zone is not just a worthy successor to its namesake, it makes its own case for its own existence"
• The reboot fails to fulfill the best aspects of a great, timeless Twilight Zone episode: "The reboot might possess Serling’s playful, finger-wagging heart, but it doesn’t possess its minimalism"
• The Twilight Zone is just an exercise in nostalgia: "For now, The Twilight Zone is an anthology of anthologies, a signpost that’s not up ahead but, for the most part, in the rearview mirror"
• The so-so revival of Rod Serling’s classic TV series is more like taking a metaphorical highlighter pen to the times we live in
• Even when the story falters, The Twilight Zone still serves as a fantastic acting showcase
• Jordan Peele would make Rod Serling proud: "By embracing the true spirit of Zone then applying his own worldview to that, he's made this version ineradicably his own, just as the original classic was ineradicably Serling's."
• CBS All Access' Twilight Zone is tasked with doing the opposite of Serling's version: "Taking the specific sensibilities of Serling and of Peele himself and sanding them down to the point where their stories are little more than broadly appealing campfire tales"
• Peele’s update is fresh, smart, entertaining and inspired: "It’s just a shame to see it relegated to such a tiny corner of the cultural conversation"
• The message and the twist in three of the first four episodes are so obvious that their wannabe-timeliness can’t save them
• The first two episodes flawlessly translates the brilliance of the original
• The Twilight Zone being a mixed bag is a good thing: "What’s most important is that the show’s ethos, one that was optimistic even as it shed light on another one of our foibles, remains intact"
• The first two episodes are 54 minutes and 36 minutes, respectively: "These science-fiction fables aren’t really built to keep going and going"
• Jordan Peele doesn’t evoke the drama, pathos, and cosmic irony you might hope for from a host
• Peele makes an unnerving host, simultaneously channeling Serling and creating something new: "He’s carefully adjusted his speech to mirror Serling’s famous cadence, but when he stares straight into the camera, there’s a cruel blankness in his eyes. The actor’s physical stillness only makes you feel more uneasy. Peele comes across as less of a narrator, and more like a bored god, playing with people as though they were toys."
• The Twilight Zone is addictively haunting: "Peele and his writers and directors have created something that not only feels like it honors the originals but brings us something fresh and exciting"
• Why David Copperfield is name-dropped in the premiere episode
• Kumail Nanjiani was scared to star in the premiere: "The main character I play goes to such dark places; I’ve never played anything like that"
• Peele got involved thanks to Get Out: Executive producer Simon Kinberg and his team saw Get Out, and they regarded it as a modern-day Twilight Zone