Reviews
Film & TelevisionIntrusive gizmos and doodads scare Ex
Machina director (and The Beach novelist) Alex
Garland, but he’s even more worried about the
people behind them — the so-called geniuses
and innovators. Some people view technology
as an existential threat, literally (as in: We’ll be
obliterated by what we create); Garland views it
as an existential threat, philosophically (as in:
Tech will usurp our sense of humanity).
Describing FX’s eight-part limited series
Devs in concrete terms borders on point-
less. Suffice it to say that it’s incredibly Alex
Garland-esque, which is appropriate given
that he wrote and directed the entirety. It’s
haunting and hypnotic, a show of mood and
vision. If it also turns a corner from entranc-
ingly opaque to a bit on-the-nose by the end,
chances are — especially for fans of Garland,
whose latest work was 2018’s Annihilation —
you’ll be too absorbed to be bothered.
Devs tells the story of Lily (Sonoya Mizuno),
a software engineer working at Amaya, a
cutting-edge Bay Area tech company owned
by Forest (Nick Offerman). I’d say that Forest
is enigmatic, but Lily also is enigmatic, as is
nearly everyone employed at Amaya, includ-
ing Forest’s brilliant lieutenant Katie (Alison
Pill) and his chief of security (Zach Grenier).
The plot kicks off when Lily’s boyfriend, Sergei
(Karl Glusman), gets a coveted position in
Amaya’s remote Devs division, an offshoot
populated only by the best and brightest. Then
something bad happens.
The series unfolds as something of a techno-
noir, with Lily as the gumshoe working outside
the law in her search for answers, while other
forces have to figure out if she’s an obstacle to
be neutralized. It all takes place against the
backdrop of San Francisco — just like inevi-
table creative touchstones from The Maltese
Falcon to Ver t igo to the most recent season of
Netflix’s The OA, a show whose fandom just
might be able to scratch some itches here.
Whether Devs makes tangible sense ceases
to matter as long as Garland and his team of
regular collaborators have you under their
spell. The pilot introduces many of cinema-
tographer Rob Hardy’s most evocative images,
from the rippling gold cube that is the Devs
workspace — created by production designer
Mark Digby and set decorator Michelle Day, it’s
half austere, half Gustav Klimt — to the colos-
sal statue of a captivated girl that towers above
the treetops. Andrew Whitehurst’s visual
effects hide in plain sight, illustrating the
subtle futuristic advancement of the world.
It’s all accompanied by musical compositions
by Ben Salisbury, Geoff Barrow and the duo
know as The Insects that alternate between
sumptuous and industrial-ambient. It’s all
pure Garland and a reminder that auteurism
is a team sport.Mizuno, a Garland regular, rarely proj-
ects like an actress, but she feels natural
and unguarded. Garland crafts a number
of scenes that frame Lily in profile as she
engages in conversation with Katie — scenes
providing proof, along with CBS All Access’
Star Trek: Picard, that Pill is aces at delivering
deceptively affectless monologues. Grenier
and Jin Ha, as Lily’s cybersecurity ex, offer
contrasting shades of stillness, one men-
acing and one benign. And Cailee Spaeny
and Stephen McKinley Henderson make up
another dyad — embodying youth and wis-
dom, respectively — and are the show’s most
likable pair.
Then there’s Offerman, playing almost
without a whiff of humor and progressively
exposing his character’s torment in a way that
exhibits his rarely tapped versatility. This is a
performance that will haunt you the next time
you hear a seemingly awkward Silicon Valley
billionaire talking in platitudes.
Garland, for all his frequent brilliance, isn’t
above platitudes of his own. Devs peaks in its
sixth and seventh hours, before a finale that
caves to pressure to go from Big Questions to
Semi-Satisfying Answers; there’s an obvious-
ness to some of the conclusiveness here that
comes across as cheap and a bit disappoint-
ing — though more in retrospect than while
you’re absorbed in the journey.
It’s possible that what I needed was less and
not more — for Garland to dare to push view-
ers to accept the unknowable in a show about
characters refusing to do just that.AIRDATE Thursday, March 5 (FX on Hulu)
CAST Sonoya Mizuno, Nick Offerman, Zach Grenier,
Jin Ha, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson
CREATOR Alex GarlandDevs
Alex Garland’s FX/Hulu limited
series about technology and its toxic
effects is a frequently enthralling
futuristic nightmare By Daniel Fienberg
Nick Offerman plays the CEO of a tech company with
a deeply mysterious developments division.