Yellowjackets, review: Lord of the Flies meets Alive in this gripping 90s-themed survival tale
The Nineties are back in fashion. As confirmation, here is Yellowjackets (Sky Atlantic), a drama that begins in 1996 and stars Juliette Lewis and Christina Ricci, two actresses as synonymous with that decade as bootcut jeans.
It’s a deliciously dark thriller, and features Ricci with a bubble perm that makes her look like one of the Golden Girls. But the black comedy is mixed into a story of genuine horror. A plane carrying a girls’ football team crashes in the wilderness. What follows is a survival tale. In the words of one who made it out: “A bunch of my friends died and the rest of us starved and scavenged and prayed for 19 months until they finally found us.” And that’s putting quite a gloss on things.
There are shades of Lord of the Flies and Lost here, but the most direct comparison is with Alive, the 1993 film telling the true story of a Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the Andes. You may remember what happened there: the survivors took the decision to eat the flesh of their dead friends. In Yellowjackets, they don’t wait for their friends to die, but hasten things along. Sugar and spice and all things nice, eh?
We switch between two time periods: the teenagers’ ordeal and 25 years later, when those who survived are drawn back together. Episode one establishes the characters: Shauna (Melanie Lynskey) is the former A-grade student now stagnating as a stay-at-home mother, but occasionally bringing those survival skills to bear by spearing a rabbit for supper. Taissa (the fabulously-named Tawny Cypress) is running for state senator. Natalie (Lewis) has just emerged from rehab and teams up with Misty (Ricci), once the class loser and now a sociopath.
Sometimes the traversing between then and now feels too hectic. But other times you’ll be relieved to cut away from the wilderness because the scenes set there are truly unnerving. They’re also pretty high on gore, as when we see the aftermath of the crash. Throw in the suggestion of something supernatural, plus a suspected murder plot in the present day, and there’s a hell of a lot going on. But it had me gripped.
