This is the third version of The Twilight Zone, preceded by the landmark series of the 1960s, a 1985 revival which I must confess that I've never seen, and an alright movie that served as a love letter to Sterling's original brainchild. So how does this series stack up? Well....... it's not great.
Like many things from the late '90s and early '00s, this show is dated in the worst possible way. Nothing is more indicative of this than the revamped "rock" intro-music composed by Johnathan Davis of Korn. If everything in the show was that laughably bad I'd be giving it a 10/10, but sadly the show is just kind of dull.
Some of the worst episodes are the ones that attempt to remake episodes of the original, and these episodes really highlight the problems with this series. One example is "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," an all time classic of the original series. Where the original was set on a calm, dark night this remake takes place in an upscale neighborhood in broad daylight with bright green lawns surrounding everyone. The original used the alien hysteria as an allegory for paranoia about communism. The remake is explicitly about post 9/11 terrorism, no allegory. This show tended to avoid allegory altogether. Instead making every story so straightforward that it felt like an after school special, or it told a simple sci-fi story with no deeper meaning. Both formats fall flat.
I don't want this review to focus exclusively on comparisons to the original, but when you have the same story told by two different people it's easy to see where one succeeds and the other fails. The original series made masterful use of lighting to create foreboding shadows and ominous atmosphere that was heightened by the camera work. The 2002 series is a technical dud. It's overlit and filled with flat boring shots. Small town america and urban slums are replaced with LA suburbs that look like the kind of places the producers probably live. It's so much less interesting and harder to relate to despite being more contemporary.
Overall the show is just boring. I've seen a handful of episodes and honestly struggled to get through each one. There may be some gems hidden among the mediocrity, but I haven't found them. It's hard to stack up to a classic, but even if you completely divorce this series from the original, it offers nothing to stimulate an audience and hold their attention. You may want to check it out as a curiosity, but I think you'll lose interest as quickly as I did.
Like many things from the late '90s and early '00s, this show is dated in the worst possible way. Nothing is more indicative of this than the revamped "rock" intro-music composed by Johnathan Davis of Korn. If everything in the show was that laughably bad I'd be giving it a 10/10, but sadly the show is just kind of dull.
Some of the worst episodes are the ones that attempt to remake episodes of the original, and these episodes really highlight the problems with this series. One example is "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," an all time classic of the original series. Where the original was set on a calm, dark night this remake takes place in an upscale neighborhood in broad daylight with bright green lawns surrounding everyone. The original used the alien hysteria as an allegory for paranoia about communism. The remake is explicitly about post 9/11 terrorism, no allegory. This show tended to avoid allegory altogether. Instead making every story so straightforward that it felt like an after school special, or it told a simple sci-fi story with no deeper meaning. Both formats fall flat.
I don't want this review to focus exclusively on comparisons to the original, but when you have the same story told by two different people it's easy to see where one succeeds and the other fails. The original series made masterful use of lighting to create foreboding shadows and ominous atmosphere that was heightened by the camera work. The 2002 series is a technical dud. It's overlit and filled with flat boring shots. Small town america and urban slums are replaced with LA suburbs that look like the kind of places the producers probably live. It's so much less interesting and harder to relate to despite being more contemporary.
Overall the show is just boring. I've seen a handful of episodes and honestly struggled to get through each one. There may be some gems hidden among the mediocrity, but I haven't found them. It's hard to stack up to a classic, but even if you completely divorce this series from the original, it offers nothing to stimulate an audience and hold their attention. You may want to check it out as a curiosity, but I think you'll lose interest as quickly as I did.