In a new Netflix series from Spain, a composer has lots of horrifying visions that are only enhanced when he’s struck by lightning during a storm. We’d probably take those visions if it meant we survived a lightning strike, but that wouldn’t make for a very good psychological thriller, would it?
Opening Shot: In a darkened house in London, a man is playing piano in time to a metronome. His wife and kids are sleeping. He starts hitting a flat note, and for some reason he’s compelled to smash the key cover on his left hand, breaking it.
The Gist: Alex (Javier Rey) is a musician who composes film scores, and a year after the incident where he smashed his own hand, he finds himself in the remote seaside village of Tremore in a massive rented house, trying to get his latest project done. He’s also going through a divorce, with his wife taking their kids to Amsterdam. His only neighbors are Leo (Willy Toledo) and Maria (Pilar Castro), who live far enough away that Alex usually drives to see them.
After Alex wakes up from his latest nightmare, feeds the cat, and tries to write something, he gets a new script from his agent. It also spurs him to clean up around the house and go into town, despite the fact that a huge thunderstorm is imminent. There, he runs into Leo and Maria, who remind them that they have friends who want to meet him at dinner that night. He also goes to visit Judy (Ana Polvorosa); she runs a hostel in town and the two of them have been “friends with benefits” for awhile now. He takes her back to his house for some “dirty stuff.”
After sex, they cover items in the house to get ready for the storm, and she sleeps on his couch as he leaves for Leo and Maria’s dinner party. However, Alex sees the fire in the fireplace flare up and someone who looks and sounds like Judy say, “Don’t leave the house.”
He drives over to the neighbors, anyway, has dinner with the couple and their friends as the power cuts out, and heads back right as the power comes on and the storm kicks up. Right as he’s about to take the long driveway to his house, a lightning bolt fells a tree right in front of the car. He has the choice to go around it, but tries to move the tree instead. That’s when he’s hit by lightning himself.
Alex wakes up hours later in the hospital, a bit scarred but for the most part remarkably untouched. Because he kept muttering Judy’s name, Leo and Maria find her; she stays with him as he recovers in the hospital, and the two of them bond over their scars, as Judy came to Tremore after being in a car accident a few years prior.
The visions that he was already having are now even more vivid and violent; one night, he experiences a storm where thousands of dead fish rain down on the house and in the fenced-off pool. Then suddenly, a bloody and dying Maria comes to the house, calling Leo’s name. When he runs to tell Leo, though, he finds out that his neighbors are just fine. Just what the hell is going on?
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s interesting that The Last Night At Tremore Beach and Before came out on the same day, because both shows involve people who are having visions that are vivid and unexplainable.
Our Take: Written, produced and directed by Oriol Paulo, The Last Night At Tremore Beach sets up a story that’s much deeper than “man gets hit with lightning, and has terrifying visions.” Alex’s visions started long before he was hit by lightning, as evidenced about what happened to his hand. We’re not quite sure yet what precipitated these visions, but we know the lightning made them even more horrific.
Where this story is essentially going is to show how Judy is connected to all of this; after all, the vision that said “don’t leave the house” looked and sounded like Judy. It seems that they’re going to be more than just friends with benefits, linked by trauma. What we hope is that this isn’t just one episode of another of Alex having these visions and his neighbors increasingly finding that he’s losing his mind.
A show like this is usually better when the person having visions have someone to be their ally and believe them, and it feels that Judy will soon become that person. But the show will be much better if Judy has secrets of her own, rather than just be the supportive girlfriend.
Sex and Skin: A lot of matter-of-fact nudity in the scenes during and after Alex and Judy’s sex session.
Parting Shot: Alex, after the incident with his neighbors, looks in the mirror and his horrified to see that he’s not even wet from the storm he thought was outside.
Sleeper Star: Willy Toledo’s Leo has a scene with Alex where he talks about how he met Maria and how opposite they are. We wonder if that’s going to be foreshadowing for something terrible to happen later.
Most Pilot-y Line: Maria and Leo’s friends are huge fans of Alex’s, and they want him to sign a record album of his that they brought along. Wow. give the guy a little space, folks.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Last Night At Tremore Beach is creepy enough to grab our attention, but we’re curious about how the relationship between Alex and Judy will play into all of the visions Alex is having.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.