Shining Girls

Kirby's nobody's girlfriend and even if she is constantly on the verge, she perseveres. Good stuff.

Things could go off the rails in the closing chapters, tainting the attentive construction, arresting performances, and spine-tingling teases. But the creative trio of Moss, MacLaren, and Luisa has made me a believer. These first four episodes aren’t just set-up. They’re exhilarating.

Shining Girls takes its time to reveal the entire picture of what its story is about. But with a fine lead performance by Moss and expert direction, it’s still got enough tension to make us OK with getting only little bits of info.

Even as the female victim count adds up, Shining Girls keeps its integrity and never backs away from this underlying truth.

It’s gloomy and uncompromising, but Shining Girls offers an intriguing mystery which takes some unexpected routes, featuring an Elisabeth Moss performance as strong as any on her remarkable résumé.

This is another terrific show. Just don’t expect to come out of it being able to explain a lot of what happens. Kirby’s story is all that matters, and that plays out as well as you would expect when you pair a great actor with a great director and potent material.

Instead of a single performance, Moss gives a cluster of them, finely calibrating Kirby’s posture, confidence, and anxiety level to reflect each new reality. ... Because the show sticks so close to her fractured consciousness, we come to appreciate how hard it is for her to survive, let alone conduct such an unusual investigation.

“Shining Girls” is undeniably kooky, but the characters, situations and the city itself are so vividly brought to life that you’ll be dying to figure out what happens next. Just watch it with the lights on.

Not everything works and there are definitely some questions about the ending and the mechanism behind the whole conceit. Nevertheless, Moss is a force in her capacity as lead and director that helps sell the “things weren’t how they should be” narrative.

I almost got accustomed to the sags in pace because I knew there would be a peak following each valley. And I have to say that everything about the show gains momentum at the end of episode four, which features one of the best closing scenes of the year.

It’s taking nothing away from the rest of a fine cast to note that “Shining Girls” is 75% the Elisabeth Moss Show. ... That said, there are other things to recommend it, in the production and the performances, a sense of the ordinary that keeps the uncanny elements rooted to something recognizably real, and makes characters that flirt with cliche into people you can believe in.

Because of how convincingly Moss plays Kirby’s dilemma, it’s completely possible to pretend that the trippier genre elements either aren’t there at all or don’t matter. ... Even once you know generally what’s happening, the hows and whys never really materialize, which is something more likely to bother viewers approaching Shining Girls as a thriller than as a character study. It doesn’t help that none of the supporting players around Moss have much to play.

It has a lot to say about surviving trauma and gaining agency as Kirby fights for control and to put an end to Harper’s killing spree. But not everything in its story works, and with a high-concept drama such as this one, every misstep dims the show’s potential just a little bit more.

Even after going in blind and getting frustrated near the third episode by a confusing story, the series reeled me back in when the supernatural aspect is revealed in full. For those who enjoy a more experimental approach to storytelling, unburdened by the confines of one specific genre, Shining Girls is an exciting entry for Apple TV+.

Shining Girls unfolds slowly, like Zodiac on Xanax, which could be a hypnotic vibe to some, or an enervating one to others. In order to keep us hooked, especially after the ground rules are established in the first four episodes, the show’s writers and directors parcel out details.

The show's confusing, non-linear approach, combined with a plodding pace, makes it a challenge in the early going. ... Patient viewers who can put up with the show's pace and depressing atmosphere will be rewarded in the end.

As a critic, I get paid to watch TV shows, which is a lucky thing for Apple TV's new series Shining Girls, because for its first two and a half hours, it's nearly unwatchable, even though it starts with a reasonably enticing premise: a couple of reporters trying to track down a serial killer. Slooooow, confusing and riddled with what-the-hell moments, it moves at the pace of a snail on Quaaludes. And then, the snail gets a shot of crystal meth. Shining Girls is an immensely entertaining show, if you have the time and patience to wait it out.

Whether or not the convoluted plot will hold together across the whole series is up for debate, but as a portrait of trauma, it is devastatingly effective.

Non-linear storytelling has always been more easily accomplished in novels than in films or series, and Shining Girls unfortunately struggles to get it right. It does mostly stick the landing, but it's a bumpy, occasionally frustrating road before this series is truly able to shine.

Alongside Moss, Moura as the journalist aiding her, and Jamie Bell as the personification of human venality pursuing her, do fine work. But there’s simply not enough story here to make for a credible eight-episode series, which means that things lumber when they should soar, and every story point is overexamined.

The villain is both vaguely written and bizarrely benign. It’s not just him, either; the circuitous, tiresomely-stretched-out series fails to establish any real characters beyond its protagonist.

Moss is obviously a draw, but even she can only do so much with thin and confusing material.

Although the show’s concept of trauma resonating throughout multiple eras and warping reality itself is definitely intriguing, it’s only touched on briefly, with a few on-the-nose snatches of dialogue delivered by astronomer Jin-Sook (Philippa Soo) being forced to do much of the thematic heavy lifting. The rest of the time, the focus is on lukewarm explorations of patriarchal oppression, journalistic integrity, and familial strife, and the series fails to set up any believable conflicts, let alone to say anything new.

You never get a sense of the story’s internal logic. The whole thing feels undercooked and overcomplicated. The show’s vibe is very “curl up in a cardigan with a glass of wine on a rainy day.” But despite the wild swings of the story, the series tends to feel tonally monotonous and can’t sustain a sense of tension over its eight episodes.