Mysterious supernatural happenings are afoot in the Pacific Northwest. Again. Is someone trying to resurrect the spirit of the Vancouver-shot “X-Files”? Yes, that’d be Glen Morgan, producer of the spooky ’90s show, here adapting the British novel “The Intruders” for an eight-part series about a secret society devoted to immortality via the possession of strangers’ bodies.
It’s a premise that would have made a decent episode for Mulder and Scully, but by the end of the first two installments of this series I found myself weary of the whole enterprise.
That’s largely because there isn’t anyone here engaging enough to make you want to stick around. Our ostensible protagonist is Jack (John Simm), a former LA cop whose wife Amy (Mira Sorvino), a lawyer prone to speaking in tongues while dreaming, goes missing. But Jack, regrettably, is a bit of a cipher — disappointing, given Simm’s previous lauded performances on “Life on Mars” and “Doctor Who.” Even when his detective friend (Tory Kittles) shows up with a story about a double homicide that may somehow connect to Jack, his reaction is almost imperceptible.
Meanwhile, a black-clad assassin (James Frain, “The White Queen”) is stalking various others in the area who seem to know … something, dispatching most of them with a bullet or two to the head. He’s obviously got connections to the creepy things happening to Amy and others, but, I guess, lacks the otherworldly know-how to kill in a less noisy fashion.
Then there’s Madison (Millie Bobby Brown), celebrating her ninth birthday. She’s contacted by Frain and subsequently behaves like a 9-year-old girl’s impression of a grown-up psychopath. After drowning the family cat, she flees to a bus station where she’s stopped by an employee who apologetically tells her she can’t ride on her own.
“You aren’t sorry,” she snarls, “but you will be.”
This is supposed to be chilling, but comes off more as “bratty child actor.”
Gradually, we learn of a secret, immortality-obsessed society calling itself Qui Reverti (“who return,” in Latin, roughly). The group is a hot topic with the host of a conspiracy-minded, ham-radio show whose owner is himself on Frain’s kill list.
He’s also one of several tropes that’ll be overly familiar to sci-fi viewers, along with the Chinese woman who dispenses wisdom from a rundown hotel room and a sleek corporation that seems to have its hand in the supernatural cookie jar.
The episodes are prettily shot, with the region’s natural misty gloom adding plenty of atmosphere. But the dialogue’s never clever enough to convince you this is more than an amalgamation of themes we’ve seen many times before. Qui Reverti, indeed.