SummaryStrangers wake up to find themselves locked in their individual hotel rooms and completely under electronic surveillance. They know nothing about how or why they were taken there or even who they are now trapped with together in a nameless deserted town.
SummaryStrangers wake up to find themselves locked in their individual hotel rooms and completely under electronic surveillance. They know nothing about how or why they were taken there or even who they are now trapped with together in a nameless deserted town.
Creator Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) is no stranger to pretzel-twist plots and out-of-the-left-field surprises, and his new series, about a gaggle of strangers, abducted and abandoned in a CCTV-monitored ghost town, promises both in spades.
While this straightforward, unapologetically derivative thriller won't blow your mind, it's a whole lot better than ABC's "Happy Town" or CBS's "Harper's Island" and may turn out to be like NBC's "Journeyman" -- a slice of genre entertainment that slowly developed into a worthwhile weekly commitment (and, er, yes, was canceled too soon.
Persons Unknown was originally developed for Syfy, and it shows. It's all eerie music, unanswered questions and disturbing discoveries, leavened only very occasionally by humor.
Take "Lost," mash it up with "The Prisoner," throw in a little "Saw," over-season with badly written and poorly delivered dialogue, glaze with horror-film lighting, dream-scene camerawork and elevators like you haven't seen since "The Shining," and you've got "Persons Unknown."