Amazingly incredible. For me, a rather strange phenomenon are films and TV series, the action of which takes place in a strictly limited space, beyond which they do not go one centimeter. Such stories would look no worse on the stage, especially since they do not need all the power and magic of cinema. Ironically, I’ve watched the second such series lately. “Evil on interrogation” focused on its main character, on the play of the actress, a small screen is not needed. Moreover, even the original name – The Box – makes it clear that the limitations of space are more important than anything else. “Box” means not only the premises of the police station, where tragic events happen, but, I dare assume, the head of the main character is a skull box, and in total the trap into which she and everyone else fell in this “enchanted” place.
The main accents necessary for the understanding of the series are placed by the first series, presenting Sharon Peachey as the “queen of interrogation”, an ideal and fanatical employee with a perfect hairstyle (“hair to hair”) and an equally ideal family. What happens to her in the future, all her obsession, bordering on real madness, is a direct consequence of her declared ideality. The unsolved case—the “skeleton” that any police officer has in his closet—is far more disturbing to the idealist perfectionist than to the nine-to-six-pants wiper. Therefore, in the main characters, with all the variety of options, she was chosen - the most suggestible and the most stubborn. However, there is a drawback to this theory: as a police officer, and one of the best, Peachey simply cannot be deprived of critical thinking, which should be a defense against any kind of insanity. It turns out that the heroine is not all right with him, and this, at least, is strange. One way or another, the heroine is now not just an open case, but her personal challenge, and this is more important than the voices in her head, more important than everything else. In principle, the ending is about the same thing: Peachey solves her own personal problem, not someone else’s, and the end of her story seems to emphasize that in serving others, you can never forget yourself.
This series paradoxically plays with genres: if at first it may seem that everything that happens on the screen is nothing more than a police drama, then the fantastic component becomes obvious, but its presence in the series does not seem really necessary. The appearance of something unreal and supernatural devalues all of Peachy's detailed suffering and potential mental diagnoses, simplifies rather than complicates the story. Despite the fact that the local poltergeist demands an investigation of the crime, the detective component of "Evil in Interrogation" is weak. The entire evidence base consists of whispers: “I did not kill my husband,” which is suggested to be believed as an axiom, which does not seem correct for any investigation. In addition, we learn almost nothing about the crime itself, about the circumstances, about the victim, in the end, and then the question arises, what is proposed to disclose? The unsolved mystery is boring, and until the last series it remains exactly that.
As mentioned above, the scene here is limited to the police station, and it’s not just a place – it’s a place where nothing exists but the circumstances suggested. Peachey does amazing, reckless, impermissible things, but somehow she is allowed to do it, as if she exists outside the law and outside society. On the territory of the precinct, it is as if time itself has stopped, like the clock in the interrogation room, and there is no justice, no responsibility for obvious crimes. Perhaps it is necessary to let the heroine close her gestalt, but there is little plausibility in this. However, there is no need to think about plausibility at all: the finale of the series, especially the last two episodes, is such that it is very difficult to understand what exactly happened. One is not connected with the other, reality and fiction can not be friends with each other. I think that in this limited space, in this madness, in this obsessive mysticism, the authors have outwitted themselves, having failed to reliably express themselves in any of the genres that they touched upon.
Watching this series is not that boring, but psychologically difficult - there is a lot of cruelty, not always motivated, violence, rudeness, selfishness, meanness. Perhaps there is some counterbalance to this, but any forces of love here are defeated by the forces of darkness that fill the enchanted area. I think that positive emotions as a contrast were not chosen quite consciously: the unconscious must defeat the mind, not the senses. "Evil in interrogation" - a thing is far from intricate, not dynamic and not particularly original, it could attract some details, but there are no details in it. The most worthy thing in this series is the play of the actress playing the role of Sharon Peachey, since such madness, such mood swings are not easy to show. It's a pretty passable thing.