Dominic Fishback is fantastic in this horror-comedy Amazon – The Hollywood Reporter

between Show me a heroAnd SatanAnd Judas and the Black Christ And The last days of Ptolemy GrayDominique Fishback could get an Academy Award nomination and a small pile of Emmy nods on her resume. you did not.

But Fishback’s stretch as one of entertainment’s most trusted and overlooked actresses has to reach a tipping point with Amazon swarmwhich is seven new untold novels from Janine Nabers, and in its first showing since AtlantaDonald Glover. Retaining nearly every second of the horror-comedy/road trip hybrid, Fishback shines, delivering performances that made me rewatch laugh-out-louds or heartbreaking beats — and would probably require re-watching the full series to see how each new plot or expectation-flipping info informs every acting decision.

It’s a performance of delirious, bizarre choices that anchors a parade of deliciously bizarre choices I wish I could be so sure about swarm As I am going to star it. swarm Bold and provocative, he is fully committed to whatever he wants. But she goes after her cynical targets with a sledgehammer when at times a precise tool may be best. It is so ingrained in this cultural moment that I wouldn’t be equally surprised if, looking back from a little further afield, swarm It emerged as one of my favorite shows of the year or, alternatively, it seemed laughably broad.

There are a lot of details in swarm That Amazon wants to remain mysterious that some gait is needed. Fishback plays Dre, an impossibly awkward young woman who lives with her sister, Marissa (Chloe Bailey), in Houston. Marissa has a promising career as a makeup artist and a great boyfriend (Khalid Damson Idris). Dre has…well, Dre has a deep affection for pop sensation Ni’Jah, even running a popular Twitter feed catering to The Swarm, Ni’Jah’s fearsome fanbase. well good. It’s not just an emotion. It’s an obsession, and after Dre runs out a credit card for Ni’Jah tickets, things start to go a lot wrong. Multi-year – The series begins in 2016 – and the multi-country journey begins.

With Glover behind the camera for the pilot followed by Adamma Ebo (Honk to Jesus. Save your soul.) And Atlanta Veterans Stephen Glover and Ibra Aki, swarm It feels like one of those unsettling standalone episodes that peppered the second half of the series AtlantaRun, with various symbolic layers and threads of genre. It’s a recipe for Twilight Zone The episode — or, in this case, seven and a half hours Twilight Zone Episodes – Anchored by Fishback, the notes are almost hallucinatory and the sound design is punctuated by moments of high intensity through an underlying titular hum.

Without getting into spoilers, here are episodes of swarm that are disturbing, shockingly violent, and ridiculously funny (and maybe still shockingly violent). It’s peppered with guest stars ranging from the underutilized (Rory Caulkins at the premiere, but I’m hardly sure why) to the hilariously spread out (Paris Jackson looks better if you remember “Teddy Perkins”) Atlanta episode) to one cameo in Episode IV which is so perfect that anyone who spoils it beforehand should be cursed by an unfortunate encounter with Dre.

The most central performance highlight of the show is that Dre looks a little different every episode, but Fishback makes every transition look organic. She’s able to be a blunt-not-literally-zombie one moment and a slick physical comedian the next, sympathetic and relatable in one interaction and terrifyingly sociopathic in the next. The characterization gets richer and more complex in the second half as swarm Lean into efforts to satirize Dre, and point out the factors that make her cringe with self-conscious clarity suggestive of a popular corner satire from Ryan Murphy’s work.

This clarity can be annoying. There’s great fun in “Tee-hee, Ni’Jah looks a lot like Beyoncé!” Getting to know the first episode, but the clearer the comparison becomes, the less the reward. (After watching the show, you’ll know it’s a lot more complicated than this, but mom is the word!)

And I don’t know how many points to give for realization swarm In order to disembowel a toxic fandom and perform online trolling. This is another instance where the show’s quirk, which may alienate some viewers, becomes an advantage: If you don’t subscribe to social media critiques or celebrity culture, just wait and you’ll get to true crime adaptations or cult documentaries. Whatever our obsession as a society has been in the past five years, swarm obsessed with it I cannot say whether the superficiality of these obsessions is always singled out or I fall, from time to time, to a similar superficiality of my own accord.

You won’t know what swarm after the pilot. Don’t worry. Its format shifts from a love story to a domestic melodrama to a raucous adventure with a gang of strippers, and then there’s one episode that turns the style, style and structure of the show upside down. Enjoy quirky clothes swarm Shell game, fishback performance treasure and join me waiting to see how you approach depth on scale.