James R | On 12, Feb 2022

Season 2 premieres on 24th March 2023. This review is based on Season 1.

“So what do you think really happened out there?” That’s the question that sits at the heart of Yellowjackets, a new thriller that follows a group of high school students who are caught in a plane crash and find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. Stuck there for months, they have to do whatever it takes to survive – and there’s no surprise in the revelation that what it takes is very nasty indeed.

The result is a survivalist thriller combined with social drama that’s somewhere between Lost and Netflix’s The Society, Pretty Little Liars and Lord of the Flies. If that description rings a bell, it’s because it’s almost exactly the same premise as The Wilds, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video earlier in the same year. Like that thriller, Yellowjackets features time-hopping insights into personal lives, private secrets and simmering tensions, piecing together the puzzle of what happened one piece at a time.

Where The Wilds had the twist of something more sci-fi-tinged, while keeping us largely rooted in the experience of its young characters, Yellowjackets takes a different tact and also fast-forwards from 1996 to the present day to catch up with each survivor in their 40s, where they have to grapple with middle-aged problems as well as the memories of their ordeal.

And so we find former star pupil Shauna (Sophie Nélisse / Melanie Lynskey) stuck in a marital rut, burned out punk girl Natalie (Sophie Thatcher / Juliette Lewis) coming out of rehab and the over-achieving Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown / Tawny Cypress) dubbed a “queer Kamala” as she runs for political office.

Despite strong performances from the young actors – including Ella Purnell as team captain Jackie and Samantha Hanratty as assistant coach Misty – the adults trying to live normal lives are the more compelling part of the story. Not speaking to each other and agreeing to keep a low profile, there’s fascination in the way that the people they are now have been shaped by the horror they all went through.

Horror, however, is the key word, and the more the first season unfolds, the more it leans into the grisly, disturbing darkness that took place in the woods. Given that it starts with graphic, unsettling imagery, that’s saying something, but the show begins to delve into more unnerving moments of hallucinations and delusions as well as the expected deceit and drama of high school dynamics.

The flashback device occasionally feels a little too over-used, with the jumping back and forth leaving us with not enough time for the crowded cast to make much of an impact in the season’s first half. But a gritty, gutsy approach from a directing team that includes Karyn Kusama gives the whole show enough of a shocking edge to keep you intrigued – and the script finds genuinely surprising twists and turns, from the brutal determination of Shauna to correct wrongs in her life to the dedication of Taissa to push forwards with her ambitions, despite hidden complications.

Throughout, the young/adult cast are well matched, with Christina Ricci having particular fun as the increasingly sociopathic Misty, and they sink their teeth into the evolving personalities of each player, as they’re faced with such challenges as blackmail, affairs, kidnapping and poisoning – it soon becomes clear that questions of how was cheating with whom behind who else’s back can have stakes and consequences far beyond a normal teen falling-out. The chilling mystery is less about what happened and more about who it happened to.

The end result is a gripping study of trauma, friendship and recovery, a survival horror in which staying alive is only the first part of survival. If you can stick with it, the second half finds a compelling momentum that keeps you sliding through each cliffhanger like a body dragged through snow.

 

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