‘Dexter: Resurrection’ Review: Let the Dead Rest
There is a morbid symmetry for how the “Dexter” franchise takes if her parent company also becomes a scale of his former self. Showtime, once a Premium Cable Competition of HBO, now lives largely as a sub-brand of a streaming service, while Paramount Global Grovels completes its own sale before the Trump administration. In the meantime, “Dexter” is approaching his 20th year on his third Spin -off, who brings his namesake anti -hero back from the dead for another bite in the apple. The whole situation is just as grimly amusing as “Dexter” used to be in its prime.
The first “Dexter” requirements, “New Blood”, at least contradicted the cynicism of so many generations by giving the story a definitive end: with Dexter, his own teenage son, Harrison (Jack Alcott), both a generation cycle of violence and perpetuating. But three years later ‘original sin’ arrived, an excess prequel that Also Under the marginal contributions of “new blood” by surviving the end surviving and then framing his events as a flashback in the mid-surgery. (Creatively infertile as it was, “original sin” was successful enough to earn a renewal from the second season.) Now “Resurrection” follows the serial killer to New York City, where he tries to wake about Harrison from distant while restoring his routine of finding finding and murder-colleaga psychopaths.
In the first instance, “Resurrection” seems to set up a stick from Dexter to Harrison, who now works as a valet in a hotel in the middle of the hotel. Harrison may have rejected the lifestyle of his father (violent!), But when a hotel guest with a high-rolling reveals that he is becoming a sexual predator, the younger Morgan follows in the murderous footsteps of Dexter. Yet Harrison is not the true focus of ‘resurrection’, at least in the four episodes that are provided to critics. Dexter is, and Harrison’s struggles to cover his tracks and to come to terms with the Legacy family takes a literal rear seat to the new life of the title character as a rideshare driver. “Resurrection”, just like the previous spin-offs, is supervised by “Dexter” show runner Clyde Phillips, but while Dexter is taken under the wing of a friendly family of Sierra Leonic immigrants who rent him their cellar, it is difficult to shake the feeling that we view a higher budget form of fanfiction.
Despite the change in the landscape, Michael C. Hall is not the only well -known face. David Zayas returns as Dexter’s old Miami PD colleague Angel Batista, who is a little less jovial now that he realizes that his friend may have had a good reason to falsify his own death, and Dexter still has visions from his father Harry (James Remar). Although Dexter and Harry have their umpteenth debate about the so -called “code” that they came up with to bring Dexter’s bloodlust into more productive goals, it is difficult not to wonder why “resurrection” does not easily reverse the device and the spirit of Dexter seems to look like Harrison while he is life on his own. At least that setup could have been hanging around Hall while moving the franchise ahead.
But to get ahead, you have to want to To continue, and what “resurrection” wants, is back to old tricks. Soon Dexter is back on the trail of another murderer, who focuses on his colleague performances for the Urcar app -who earns him the sobriquet ‘Dark Passenger’, and that is exactly what Dexter always called his inner demons. There are dime everywhere where you look in “Resurrection”: the premiere contains a speed-run version of the near-death hallucinations that form the whole of the “original sin” while Dexter makes repeated jokes about how strange it is to be the one to be the one to be the one on The operational or acupuncture, once table. We get them the first time.
The storyline that comes closest to the perverse joy of the original ‘Dexter’, not only the literal content, also has the most over -qualified cast. Peter Dinklage, chewing landscape as if it were chewing gum, plays a venture capitalist whose wealth turns him into a real crime fan on steroids, identifies serial killers and collects them as objects. (The murderers themselves are played, in the most outright pleasant of the early episodes, through a whole series of famous guests, from Neil Patrick Harris to Krysten Ritter.) No less an icon than Uma Thurman plays the deadly enforcement of the billionaire. She is just as good in the nostalgia mode as Hall is, back in the role of Ultra-compressed murderer for rent, she acted so well in “Kill Bill”, but sparingly enough used that the high wears out.
The same cannot be said of the rest of ‘resurrection’. The hinge from ICY Upstate to the bustling city, such as the relocation from South Florida to the northeast before it can offer the new start, most relocations are chasing. Nor can the cat and mouse game between Harrison, played by Alcott with sweet but boring naiveté, and Claudette (Kadia Saraf), the amusing stupid detective on his path. Which hints of freshness are there to be ‘resurrection’, they are overwhelmed by the inescapable odor of the old one. According to the title, “Resurrection” is an attempt to bring Dexter and “Dexter” back to life. It makes a better thing that the character is better off where he was.
The first two episodes of “Dexter: Resurrection” now stream on Paramount+ with Showtime, with remaining episodes that debut every week on Friday.
