or Why some media other people find deep feels so shallow

You ever watch a movie or a series that everyone else is gushing about, and you just can’t help but wonder…why? So then you try to find review sites you respect to explain what everyone’s getting out of it, and you find these effusive reviews about how complex and insightful the show is? And you read all those reviews and the examples that keep coming up are ridiculously simple things like, “Did you notice that Verna is an anagram of RAVEN?”

Well, it happens to me a lot. In particular, it has happened with every single thing I have watched from “horror auteur” Mike Flanagan. (Yes, people call him that. No, I do not agree.) And while it is tempting for me to just have a rant about how I think Flanagan is overrated, I wanted to glean something more broadly applicable from this experience. So I am using this opportunity to talk about why reasonable people can have different views about the depth of the same work.

I call it “the 101 effect.”

Continue reading →