300 Words on "The Twilight Zone" (2019)

Submitted for your consideration…

Since the original series left its undeniable mark on our culture, there have been several attempts to reboot, remake, and reimagine Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. These attempts always fell short, but this most recent version – executive produced and hosted by Academy Award winner Jordan Peele (Get Out, Us) – gets the Twilight Zone formula for success right.

And the show knows it. In the series’ metafictional finale (a Twilight Zone episode about making a Twilight Zone episode) Zazie Beetz’s writer extolls the genius of Serling’s original series which mixed science fiction and horror with genuine social commentary, and it was this commentary which felt lacking in every other iteration of the show until now.

This new Twilight Zone is unafraid to tackle potent societal issues, and some of the series’ finest episodes confront police brutality, toxic masculinity, the Trump Administration, and gun violence. The episodes themselves may not always live up to the sum of their parts – nearly every episode features at least one recognizable guest star complemented by stunning visual direction – sometimes hindered by predictable plotting and the occasional twinge of unlocked potential from these storylines, but to say that Peele’s Twilight Zone is the closest thing that modern viewers have to the Serling original is praise enough.

For the first time in nearly fifty years, The Twilight Zone feels as if it is hands which truly understand its purpose and potential – a team who have achieved a seemingly impossible feat; to push sand upward through the hour glass, rewinding to the origin of the fabled show’s history. A feat that is impossible except in that fifth dimension; a dimension of sound and mind.

A feat achieved only in The Twilight Zone.