What do video games mean to you? A fun, relaxing item to play after a long day at work? A competitive matchup to get your blood flowing? An escape? Well what if that escape- was to an alternate world, and possibly a future of your own? That’s the basis of The Peripheral. The Peripheral is an adaptation of the book, “The Peripheral”, by author William Gibson. A sci-fi thriller! Who doesn’t love those nowadays. I mean, Alien and Blade Runner are some of my all time favorites! This tone and style should be right up my alley!
Well….
A Failure of Futurism
To put it simply, The Peripheral didn’t capture exactly what I had in mind for a show of it’s kind. Whether it was the writing, performances, or pacing, all of which I will cover individually below, the little bit I got to see didn’t satisfy me enough for a solid review.
(And this is coming from a guy who tends to like most things)
In the best way I can put this, I think the show lacks the writing and storytelling I needed for a story of this volume. I never found myself caring about any character or what happens to them, or even caring about what happens next. It felt very two-dimensional a lot of the time, and that left me disappointed. As much as this is about a video game, the real characters had very NPC-like dialogue.
Combine the writing I didn’t like with pacing I couldn’t figure out and it makes for a pretty slow time.
I found myself on my phone more often than not during the downtime between big events in each episode. They would show you something flashy and amazing on screen just to drag out the events in the next, and that just ruins the fun of a thriller. I was just waiting for the next development patiently as the characters would intermingle or plan their next move. I’m trying to look on the bright side, but just can’t find any when it comes to the timing of most developments in this show.
You take all of that, and then throw a group of good actors on top of it, and you at least bump it up a little bit, right?
Just kidding. It didn’t do anything. I could have been in the wrong headspace during my watch, you know how human error can affect results in tests? Like that.
But a majority of the performances seemed forced, and tiresome. With two exceptions.
Chloë Grace Moretz & Gary Carr
Finally, a positive thing to say! Chloë Grace Moretz was absolutely great from what I saw, and she took what she could from the writing and ran with it. I have an unbelievable amount of respect for the performance she gave with the script she got.
If you like her in most other projects, you’ll love her here.
And Gary Carr, who I had never heard of before, shone brightly from what I got to see of him. I hope we get to see him delve into some larger roles soon, and I think this could be his breakout role. The same applies for him as well, as some of my higher-ranked scenes are based around his character.
‘The Peripheral’ – Final Thoughts
If you couldn’t tell, I didn’t much care for The Peripheral. It’s lack of spirit and understanding of the story it was trying to tell was too much for it to feel complete. I can give the benefit of the doubt that this is a great concept, and I truly hope it gets explored more in the later episodes and improves, but it has fallen short in my eyes.
If you like sci-fi thrillers, give it a shot if you’d like and see how you feel, but you can’t come back and email me telling me how bad it was, because I’ll gladly respond with:
The Peripheral is now streaming on Prime Video.
