This series was created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews. Addiss and Matthews won the Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program for creating The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019). They also worked on the screenplay for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024), so clearly they have experience working in the fantasy genre. However, the names in the credits that standout are the Duffer brothers, the two guys who famously created Stranger Things (2016), which is arguably in the fantasy genre too. It focused on a group of children who discover monsters who sneak into their bedrooms at night to do God-knows-what. This series takes that same premise and swaps out children for middle-aged people who are mostly aging retirees.
Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2 and Frida) stars as Sam Cooper, a former engineer who is a recent widower whose daughter believes he should be in a retirement home. Sam would rather live independently in his own home. His daughter finds this compromise, a housing development in the desert of New Mexico that's specifically for older Americans. It's a gated community that's very remote. Sam doesn't like it, but he doesn't really have anywhere else to go. He starts to get to know his neighbors and settle. Things change when one of the residents dies and Sam thinks it was due to a monster. Yet, no one believes him.
Geena Davis (The Long Kiss Goodnight and Thelma & Louise) co-stars as Renee Joyce, a former music agent who realizes that pieces of quartz have been disappearing from people's homes with no explanation. She begins an affair with one of the younger security guards named Paz, played by Carlos Miranda (Station 19 and Vida). She teams up with Paz to investigate these disappearances, which leads her down a path that could shed light on the origins of their gated community.
Alfred Woodard (Luke Cage and Desperate Housewives) also co-stars as Judy Daniels, a former journalist who still has a lot of those investigative journalist instincts. Like with some of the others, she's not resigned to being an old woman. She's married, but she's distant from her husband emotionally. That distance is fueled by an affair she was having. That distance also includes grief and how she's grappling with it.
Denis O'Hare (American Horror Story and True Blood) plays Wally Baker, a former doctor who has stage 4 prostate cancer. He's not expected to live that long. He's accepted this fact, but when supernatural things start to happen, very fantastical things, he sees it as an opportunity to save himself or extend his life. The problem is what the cost will be.
Seth Numrich (Under the Banner of Heaven and Turn: Washington's Spies) rounds out the cast as Blaine Shaw, the CEO of the company that built and maintains the gated community. He attempts to keep the calm and keep the residents of the aging town none-the-wiser. What no one realizes at first is Blaine and his company are essentially vampires, if not technically so. It isn't blood, but the show comes up with something else for them to feed on. It's sinister and insidious.
The series is about how so many old people are deemed disposable or not desirable. The show shows how instead that elderly folks can be useful and very capable of even extraordinary things. It makes sense that the villains would be those that value youth over everything else. This series prophets that youth isn't all that it's cracked up to be. There's much that isn't explained, but it's a fun ride for sure.
Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. / 8 eps.
Available on Netflix.
