Black Space

The age of adolescence is not only a period of tasting forbidden fruit and first sexual experiments, but also a stage of life where you don't yet feel bound by adult ethics, the temptation of power over others is too enticing, and courage is lacking to show compassion, especially when your friends consider kindness as weakness. Once, the esteemed investigator of the Israeli police suffered harassment that left his left eye damaged. When a multiple murder leads him back to the high school where he experienced so much adversity, demons from the past resurface and he is determined to conduct the investigation disregarding regulations and consequences. The series excels at working with characters, is unpredictable, and fully exploits the attractive school environment with its horny teenagers indulging in all manner of vices associated with their age. Throughout my review process, I oscillated between four and five stars, but as time went on, the otherwise good script began to work with character psychology which was somewhat unbelievable, and the last episode was clearly rushed and unresolved. In the end, I leaned toward a lower rating. Overall impression: 85%. However, Israeli production once again demonstrates remarkably high quality. (04/10/2022)

Anyone who looks at the description and expects an embarrassing Israeli B-movie is mistaken - if I hadn't read it, I wouldn't even know the difference from the American production except for the dubbing. Four students are murdered at a high school, and so a detective investigation begins - there are four killers to find among 400 other students, and the whole series is really a kind of whodunit in the form of interrogations and elimination of possible perpetrators, with more secrets and dark pasts of some of those involved gradually being added to the mix. It's a very good idea presented this way on the first viewing, in a filmmaking quality that holds your attention until the last episode. Acting-wise, it's kind of average, but certainly not the "Israeli tragedy" one might think. All the time your attention is held by a quite distinctive detective, a diverse bunch of students (although some of them look really similar, so sometimes you get a bit lost in it...) and especially the question "Who did it and why". The pacing of the series is decent, the story moves forward, the characters develop and their true natures come to the fore, the twists and turns and the main motives of the killers are gradually drawn out, and the whole thing holds its charm. The last episode was perhaps a little too rushed and underdeveloped for my liking, but I'm still happy with the overall flow and although it's not a cinematic coup, you can feel the quality coming from the series. Not a bad move by Netflix at all. (07/16/2021)