One of the primary attributes of this series is that it accomplishes instilling a feeling of social perspective through disruption. In each of the cases where the seemingly unwitting doppelganger shows up encased in ash...there is a story as well as a lesson. Invariably there is a need for them to exist. Yet these ash people are not all benign in nature. One of them is outright psychotic...made more disturbing that it is from a copy of a boy who died young. Another assumes the role of 'the wife' in every way. The actual wife had brought the relationship to near death with her struggle with depression and lack of consideration. The wife-copy was even remodeling the inside of the house...symbolic. My issue is that it came down to a game of Russian Roulette. Before writing this, my opinion was "Why were they so flat about it". Then it occurred to me that the doppelgangers were purpose driven. Once they accomplished what they were meant to do, they were okay with suicide...as can be seen in the case of Ara. Yet the whole thing seemed far too contrived. What happened to the body? Why was the husband so easily accepting of a copy of his own wife to the point where his actual wife dies and he's like "Oh well... I had a copy, anyway". That lacks both emotional and physical realism and seems to be written from the perspective of a narcissist. If that was told as an isolated instance of someone being a narcissist, then that would make sense (although the character in question was emotionally generous to a fault)...but there is another story where the choice is made for the duplicate. An older man who's wife was bed-ridden; she can't talk or interact much at all. Into his life pops a younger copy of his wife who is up and about making him food and being receptive. This man seems to be the sheriff and seemingly one of the wisest people in the village before this point. He stuffs the copy of his wife in jail for safe keeping and replaces his wife's cancer medication with something else all while making an excuse that "It's the will of God". The copy gets out and escapes with his actual wife and the son, who finds out what he did, clobbers him over the head with a statue of Jesus. This isn't a "Character Arc", it's a character 160 degree turn. There were a few examples of this person being not emotionally receptive but being thick doesn't translate to being psychotic especially after showing him to be a caring person.
Despite all that, to look past all the emotional and physical incongruities, Katla accomplished what it was supposed to: give us food for thought and stir up our emotions despite an often weak and meandering plot that drags out more than it should. Positive critique for writing and direction? Tighten it up. Ask yourself "Is this a realistic reaction?" because too much of it wasn't. If you are reading this and haven't watched it, yet, I hope I didn't spoil it for you. If you've watched most of the best SF suspense on Netflix and you need to binge on more of the same, this is Mac and Cheese level show. It will do the trick but it's nothing to get too excited about.
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