The hybrid thriller that will give you real cold sweats

If you thought you had seen everything about serial killers, you are wrong. The confusing series Shining girls, available since April 29 on Apple TV+, leads the public by the nose by skillfully mixing the codes of thriller with those of fantasy. From episode to episode, the scenario lets itself be invaded by a certain strangeness where time stretches out and where the characters are jostled in their certainties. The series offers a captivating television object that reveals an ultra-disturbing psychopath presented in the guise of Jamie Bell (Billie Elliot).

Adapted from the novel The Luminous by South African novelist Lauren Beukes, Shining girls tells the story of Kirby Mizrachi, played by the magnificent Elisabeth Moss (Handmaid’s tale, madmen, Top of the Lake), an archivist for a Chicago newspaper who never recovered from an attempted murder that she survived.

The persistence of the trauma

After the discovery of the body of a young woman whose injuries are similar to hers, she embarks on an investigation to connect this homicide and her own aggression and try to heal her wounds. This first victim leads her to eight other women murdered in similar circumstances and whose investigations have been abandoned by the police.

Accompanied by Dan Velasquez, a brilliant journalist but stunned by alcohol, she reveals over the episodes the persistence of her traumas. Since leaving the hospital, Kirby has lost all his bearings. While his mind is sharp in the field of investigation, his memory fails him for all the most basic things in life. She wakes up in a reality that she struggles to understand and plunges each day into a more dizzying abyss of incomprehension. Does she live with her mother? Did she marry Marcus? Does she live on the second or third floor of her building? One evening, she falls asleep with her cat, the next day, a dog jumps into her lap. The staging thus offers a sensory experience similar to that of The Father by Florian Zeller, plunging the viewer into the same confusion as his heroine. Every day, the young woman must bring her existence back to life thanks to a diary in which she notes down the slightest detail of her daily life in an attempt to find meaning in it.

An omniscient and omnipotent predator

The question of time is central in the series and the appearance of fantastic elements gives it even more strength. On the one hand, the inefficiency of time to soften the physical and psychological wounds of a victim of a serial killer. On the other hand, the omniscience of the psychopath who goes through the ages without aging, capable of anticipating the future, like a metaphor for the feeling of control felt by the victim, stuck in a trap with an inescapable outcome. It chooses its prey from childhood, tracks it, observes it from year to year without ever being spotted. He has control of the present, he knows the future and haunts the past. How did Kirby break the time loop? How can the victims be linked several decades apart and, above all, how does the killer manage to live outside of time?

Shining girls gives a new face to the predator and manages to renew the thriller by flirting with science fiction. It’s hard not to cry genius in front of the first four episodes available which manage to give the viewer a real sense of danger. It’s been a long time since we had such cold sweats in front of a series, and it feels good.