HUNTERS — “The Beginning & The End” Episode 101 — Pictured: Julian McMahon as Lionel McCarthy — (Photo by: Ben King/Syfy)
Hunters (Syfy, Mondays, 10/9C) is one of the most off-the-moment shows Syfy will ever do. Its tale of a secret government agency that hunts alien terrorists is dark, and gritty and genuinely creepy not to mention scary.
From the moment we see a beautiful, naked woman in a cage beside other caged animals – to the strains ofan Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark track – the series premiere The Beginning and the End is unsettling and tuque and headphones-sporting Julian McMahon editing clicking noises into that OMD track adds to the tension.
And that’s just the first part of the teaser – the part before the ‘72 Hours Earlier’ chiron.
Then we cut to a group of what appear to be special forces operatives of some sort moving in on a location that may be harboring terrorists. One of them, Regan (Britne Oldfield, The Divide, The Flash), disobeys orders and goes off on her own. Her actions lead to the death of a team member, Page (Steven Anderton) being killed.
At another location, FBI Agent Flynn Carroll (Nathan Phillips, The Bridge) is with his wife, Abby (Laura Gordon, (Twentysomething) – whom we recognize as the woman in the cage – who is kidnapped shortly after Flynn heads off to work. Their adoptive daughter, Emme (Shannon Berry) – who was the daughter of Flynn’s late partner, is sent off to boarding school. She’s ‘on the spectrum’ and has a tendency toward self-harm and with Abby taken, it’s not safe for her at home anymore.
HUNTERS — “The Beginning & The End” Episode 101 — Pictured: Nathan Phillips as Flynn Carroll — (Photo by: Narelle Portanier/Syfy)
In trying to find Abby’s kidnapper, Flynn stumbles into a situation involving the operatives we saw earlier – and is completely shut down by them before his continued efforts to find his wife require the Exo-Terrorist Unit, the ETU, to bring him onboard.
From there, the freak factor increases almost exponentially.
Hunters was developed for TV by Natalie Chaidez (12 Monkeys), from Whitley Strieber’s novel Alien Hunters.
The premiere is very grounded in its feel – nothing screams ‘extraterrestrial’ aside from the ETU’s unique weaponry (reverse-engineered from Hunter technology), an alien corpse and that odd clicking sound that’s probably their language.
We don’t know the Hunters’ end goal or where they came from (another planet? another dimension? A parallel Earth?). All we know is that they operate in cells, much like human terrorists, and are willing to take lives at will – men, women, children, rich, poor, none of that matters. At least on the surface…
HUNTERS — “The Beginning & The End” Episode 101 — Pictured: (l-r) Lewis Fitz-Gerald as Truss Jackson, Britne Oldford as Allison Regan — (Photo by: Narelle Portanier/Syfy)
The Beginning and the End is shot in the manner of a horror film – using lighting and music to heighten tension as the episode progresses. Action sequences are jumbled just enough to keep us as off balance as the ETU, and humor is kept to the barest minimum.
The premiere feels a bit scattershot – one minute Flynn is considered too big a risk to let in on the existence of the ETU, the next he’s been transferred there; Regan is clearly more than human, but when a Hunter says ‘We’re in the ETU,’ she’s not a suspect; When McCarthy takes Abby, he removes her hearing aids but still speaks to her knowing she will hear him.
Are these plotholes or are they clues as to what might be coming next? (Syfy made two eps available, but these questions aren’t addressed in the second).
The there are moments that seem too on the nose, as when McMahon’s Hunter listens to reports of young Westerners joining ISIS on the news.
Hunters is both timely and pretty entertaining in spite of its flaws. It plays on real life events to give its tale of alien terrorists verisimilitude and, for the most part, it works. It’s not the next big thing for Syfy but it is worth checking out for at least a couple of weeks.
Final Grade: B