Yellowjackets

Overall, the storyline with the teenage girls actually enduring the wilderness is superior. ... Right now, “Yellowjackets” is all kinds of fun, focused on a messy story and the messy people who rose from the ashes of it.

Naturally, everyone mentions “Lost” as the “Yellowjackets” antecedent, but “The Leftovers,” Damon Lindelof’s superior, baroque creation, is a better comparison.

The metronome on this show ticks between character development on one side and plot twists/revelations on the other with such a fantastic rhythm that it becomes mesmerizing. Even at its most extreme (and it gets pretty extreme), it holds together.

A superb Showtime thriller that riffs on Flies without repeating it. ... Yellowjackets is the rare series whose execution improves upon an already strong premise. Each episode has its puzzles and twists, just as each woman has her secrets, all set up carefully enough to make you wonder why you didn’t unravel them sooner.

This is a well-filmed, original work with great production values that deftly toggles back and forth between timelines and genres (horror, teen girl drama, adult soap opera, dark comedy) and features stellar performances from the parallel casts of young actors and familiar veterans portraying characters some 25 years apart.

While the adult versions of the Yellowjackets are portrayed by an undeniable bevy of stars — Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Juliette Lewis, and Christina Ricci — the actors we follow in pivotal flashbacks to their teenage years are just as riveting to watch on-screen.

Crafting a satisfying end to such a high-concept story is extremely challenging, and it's possible that Yellowjackets could (ahem) crash and burn in the final four episodes. But if the rest of the season is as tasty as the first course, it'll be worth it to stick around for dessert.

Yellowjackets remains one of the fall television season’s most compelling new offerings, a twisty mystery that doesn’t easily give up many of its secrets, and grounds its story in a specifically female experience in a way that other series like this have never bothered to try.

Gruesome, gripping and blackly comic, this tightly-plotted mystery-horror is meaty in all the right (and wrong) ways.

It's witty, sharp, dark, knowingly schlocky and often very gruesome.

Creators and showrunners Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson are quick to dole out the plot twists, too, while ably balancing timelines and a parade of complicated lead characters. An hour with these women flies by.

Sometimes the traversing between then and now feels too hectic. But other times you’ll be relieved to cut away from the wilderness because the scenes set there are truly unnerving. They’re also pretty high on gore, as when we see the aftermath of the crash. Throw in the suggestion of something supernatural, plus a suspected murder plot in the present day, and there’s a hell of a lot going on. But it had me gripped.

Yellowjackets moves with ferocious speed. It’s built on the recognizable architecture of bloody puzzle-box ancestors like Lost and The OA, but, starting with a breathless pilot directed by home-run hitter Karyn Kusama, the show cultivates an aesthetic rooted in particularities.

While Yellowjackets is far from perfect, and while it is absolutely the kind of series that will irreparably fall apart somewhere along the line (my money is on the season four premiere), I feel as jazzed by its first six episodes as I did by the first few Lost episodes back in the day.

The six episodes provided for review indicate answers won't be coming any time soon, and the invigorating performances sell the idea that delaying isn't necessarily the worst choice. But that only holds as long as the plot's rope maintains its tension even as it tosses out additional length. In the short term "Yellowjackets" holds all the essential ingredients needed to brew a thriller worth investing in.

Yellowjackets does a good job at tackling three genres at once. It’s a thriller, a coming of age story and a survival story, and all of it is presented in a way that makes us want to see more.

Don’t be fooled by its teen show trappings: “Yellowjackets” is a pitch black parable of human desperation that will creep its way under your skin given the chance.

The plot is pretty meaty (sorry), but Yellowjackets is adept at juggling it all, hopping between narratives and tones in a way that doesn’t register as jarring jumps, but moves in a purposefully choreographed dance.

An engrossing, character-driven thriller.

It’s the kind of show that borrows from so many others that it feels mostly original again, though its most direct influence is “Lost.” ... “Yellowjackets” isn’t without its growing pains, especially in its pacing. ... The show is at its most compelling when the girls are forced to confront the unknowable inside them.

After the six episodes screened for critics, it’s not entirely clear what kind of series “Yellowjackets” is becoming. Every so often, it teases at supernatural forces behind the bloody events in the woods. ... But for now I’m willing to go along on the strength of its voice, its chaotic energy and its characters’ evolution from riot grrrls to riot women.

Yellowjackets starts out with a gripping pilot, directed by Karyn Kusama, and then gradually loses narrative momentum. ... But when the elements align properly — Shauna delivering a cutting monologue about what Callie’s life would be like if her parents got divorced, or the show’s expertly-timed deployment of classic Nineties songs by Liz Phair, the Cranberries, Wilson Phillips, and more — it’s easy to experience a rush of adrenaline.

Yellowjackets is a luridly intriguing melodrama. [8 - 21 Nov 2021, p.8]

While ‘Yellowjackets’ features strong performances from its leads and poses intriguing questions about human nature pushed to extremes, ultimately it feels crowded with too many plot points and characters. I’m hooked enough to want to find out what happens to them all in the latter half of the season, but I can’t help but think it would be stronger if the cast were pruned by half.

Any attempts to connect the past and present versions of the characters are stymied by the gaping hole in the middle, which after six episodes is still filled only with promises that some future twist will explain everything. The series feels so stuck on the question of what happened that it can’t even begin to think about what it might mean. ... Yellowjackets remains too fun to write off just yet. Its gutsiness sets it apart from the usual survival-drama fare, and its performances suggest a deeper story even if we don’t know what it is quite yet.

Yellowjackets is promising if inessential. Its characters are archetypes, which would be more forgivable in a show that isn't quite so derivative. Regardless, reliable performers like Lynskey and Ricci can't lead us too far astray, and there are enough tantalizing building blocks to ensure the series doesn't crash-land.