Influencer culture takes a dark turn in New Year, New You
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Friday, December 28 and Saturday, December 29. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Into The Dark: New Year, New You (Hulu, Friday): Christmas brought us Pooka!, an eerie yuletide gift from the producers of The Purge and Paranormal Activity. Tonight, we’ll take a cup of kindness and ring in the New Year with the latest installment of Hulu’s spooky holiday anthology, a New Year’s Eve-themed episode which takes us into the terrors of social media, self-image, and the much-dreaded iterations of that cursed phrase, “New Year, new me.”
Suki Waterhouse (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Insurgent) and Mr. Robot’s Carly Chaikin star as auld acquaintances reunited on New Year’s for a night of self care, champagne, and nostalgia. But when a game of “Never Have I Ever” brings back old demons, come midnight the women begin to see new, truer versions of themselves emerge. By the looks of it, 2019 might prove to be even scarier than 2018.
Wild card
Murder Mountain (Netflix, Friday): Please, dear god, do not go West, young man. Or at least, don’t go to Alderpoint, Humboldt County, home of California’s illegal marijuana trade. California dreamin’ quickly becomes a nightmare for people in search of greener pastures in the region, which produces 60% of the U.S.’s blackmarket marijuana and which also happens to be the site of disappearance of dozens of visitors in the last few years. This true crime docuseries from the award-winning producers of Man On Wire uncovers the story of one of those hopefuls, 29-year-old Garret Rodriguez, who disappeared into the wild, lawless, and surreal landscape known by locals as Murder Mountain. All six episodes will be dropping on Netflix, reminding us all going into the new year that the grass is not always greener on the other side.