neXt (2020)

That's the key to Next: the vastness and invisibility of an enemy that's woven itself into our world with insidious intent, not unlike Joe McCarthy's communists or Don Siegel's pods.

Slattery elevates the pulp melodrama with crisp, ironic detachment. [12 - 25 Oct 2020, p.9]

It’s surprising “neXt” ends up with as much potential as it has. Clearly, no one has any idea what the coming months will bring, so the more that “neXt” sticks to what it can control, the better off it should fare.

Slattery is fine in this bland AI thriller.

“Next” finds smart ways to illustrate the full breadth of neXt’s capabilities. ... In these moments, “Next” becomes a surprisingly effective horror thriller, with each episode finding new ways to convey just how catastrophic this technology could be. It’s a shame, then, that “Next” isn’t this streamlined throughout. In its attempts to flesh out the world and characters it’s portraying, the show keeps throwing in more complications and backstory that threaten to swallow the rest of the stories whole.

If it's a crazy artificial intelligence series you're looking for, hunt down Person of Interest, which at least figured a way to give its maniacal machine a personality and relatable decision making progress. Next is too much artificial, not enough intelligence.

The best thing I can say about NEXT is that it moves breathlessly, building momentum in 24 fashion. ... By the time the series gets to its third or fourth episodes, the writers seem to have run out of ways to make inanimate objects scary and the bad guys are people basically brainwashed by the AI into going after our heroes. ... Nothing here is smart enough to stick. It's a distraction cosplaying as prescient.