A complex and disturbing chronicle of the survival of the women's soccer team, lost in the wilderness of the Canadian forests.
1996 year. The Hornets women's teenage soccer team (really soccer, not as is usual in America) is about to fly to the big national tournament. Unlike the local guys from the same school, who are desperately floundering in the last places, the girls are the real pride of teachers, parents and, of course, fans. Although in a triumphant team, everything is not as wonderful as it might seem: the players do not tolerate each other, the leaders are plotting against the weak teammates, and a scandal flares up between the old-timers right before the departure. Before the conflict between the girls is exhausted, their flight crashes somewhere over a dense thicket in Ontario. At first, all the survivors are waiting for salvation, but when it becomes clear that outside help will not come soon, all that remains is to rely only on ourselves and animal instincts.
Hornets is a series entirely woven from pop culture hashtags. In all reviews of the show, they only compare that with "Lost" or "Lord of the Flies" (the creators took the latter as the main reference). From the television classics of Lindelöf, there are jumping from one timeline (a period of harsh life in the forests) to another (attempts by surviving girls to adapt upon returning home). Although The Hornets begs to be compared with another showrunner's project - the melancholic saga Left Behind, which, through the images of heroes who survived the loss of loved ones after a local apocalypse, tried to study all manifestations of human trauma: from the creation of sects and suicide to the eternal guilt complex.
The Hornets, despite the intriguing synopsis, devote as much time, if not more, to the future of the feral heroines than to the cruel aspects of their extreme past. The matured Sean, out of habit, kills and cooks rabbits for dinner that have run into the yard, dejected Natalie sits tightly on drugs and alcohol, and the domineering Tessa's memories of everyday life in the forest spoil her political reputation. But, as luck would have it, one more problem is added to their problems: someone begins to send postcards with creepy symbols to those returning from the thicket. Now their secret (the viewer doesn’t know himself yet, of course, but there are enough hints of cannibalism and ritual murders in the first two episodes) can be revealed, and there’s no way to escape from oneself.
In the case of the Hornets, this move with the collision of two eras is interesting for another reason. The roles of the surviving footballers are played by Christina Ricci, Juliet Lewis and Melanie Lynskey - actresses who are stuck in the role of ever-promising young talents. Like their heroines, they also missed a significant part of their lives: only if some were thrown into a thicket of forests, then others faced an inhospitable and, in general, also quite cannibalistic showbiz. The cast in The Hornets is a clever postmodern trick, an attempt to blur the lines between the stories of actresses and their characters. In fairness, the trick is absolutely working: in this story about broken teenage destinies and youth complexes, any other artist would look much less appropriate.
On the other hand, returning to the hashtags of "Hornets", in their purely genre part there are also enough familiar pop-cultural images, except for the same "Lord of the Flies". School life from the first episodes - comedy by John Hughes, the dense forest of Ontario, in which either shadows or ghosts roam - the scenery of a chthonic folk horror in the spirit of "The Wicker Man", and the harsh everyday life of the survivalists - a hardcore arrangement of "Rogue" and others paintings about the routine outside of civilization, which is not shy about showing shocking details.
The new project of Bart Nickerson and Ashley Lyle ("Narco") stands out against the background of others precisely for its frankness: not only for the crazy actions of adults, but also for the shameless composure of children-heroines who are ready to take the most extreme measures to save their lives (not even a couple of episodes have passed , and on the screen there were already severed legs, falling out intestines and burning bodies). While some films and TV shows seem to say that there is nothing worse than the dull everyday life of forty, the Hornets declare the opposite: the worst thing is to be in the middle of a cold forest with starving girls-athletes.
This article was sponosred by Gulsen Demir
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