For decades, the world's image makers have been in a frantic race to make strange creatures.
And if Marvel creatures are the most famous, then there is another world of creatures that James Cameron successfully presented in his movie "Avatar" in its first and second parts.
And between successes that exceeded the horizons and were watched by the public in search of more than the boredom of the repeated faces in his life, and for absolute power at other times, some creators present new creatures that seem very fierce, but are remarkably human.
And the image makers find in strange creatures an opportunity to impose their convictions sometimes, as they present through their relatively new world what they want to say themselves, which weakens the artwork on the one hand, and bombards the life of these characters on the other hand, although some of them may deserve a life longer than a short series in 6 episodes.
earthly jinn
The makers of the series "Elves Island", which is shown on the Netflix service, used the famous Christmas elf, to remake it in the form of the son of a group of jinns characterized by ferocity and enormity, and controls an entire island with its inhabitants, for whom they practice rituals closer to worship.
A work of 6 episodes, each of which does not exceed half an hour in duration, but it presents features of a semi-forgotten society in the Danish archipelago.
Although the island is fictional, society itself is present with its values, and its constant desire to isolate in order to preserve its own forest, trees, and sanctities that belong to an earthly jinn that has nothing to do with the world of jinn that we know.
The events begin when a very wealthy urban family consisting of mother Charlotte (Lella Noble) and father Mads (Beder Thomas Pedersen) and their children Casper (Milo Campanale) and Josephine (Sonja Steen) arrive on the fictional "Armand" Island, to spend a very peaceful Christmas holiday.
But they face a minor accident on the road, as their car hits something they don't know what it is, but it bleeds an unknown black liquid on the car.
The family is surprised by unfriendly people, who warn them against wandering and express their displeasure with the presence of strangers on their island. Curiosity leads daughter Josephine to find an injured "faerie child", and realizes that it is the strange thing that hit her father's car, and begins to treat him after placing him at home.
And the separation of the little genie from his group leads to an imbalance in what the jinn and humans live in, and sporadic battles break out that lead to the killing of two humans, and the opening of the gate separating the two worlds, which represents a danger to humans and threatens their annihilation.
truncated idea
"Island of the Jinn" was made specifically to be watched on Christmas, which in turn symbolizes the reunion of families whose members are preoccupied throughout the year with their lives, and also to overcome what may be among their members of crises in their relationships, but this work has nothing to do with the matter, as it came as a horror series. short in 6 episodes.
"The Island of the Djinn" is a rich work that reflects the stinginess of its makers with the required effort and their strong desire to finish making it quickly, despite the fact that it contains real seeds for the idea of a series of dozens of episodes and parts, especially as it uses a symbol associated with Christmas, which is the "Christmas dwarf" in its design of the terrifying creature that was launched It says "Djinn" in the work, a name that has connotations of horror in the North.
The author of the work built a complex relationship between the inhabitants of the island and that object, where sacrifices are made for him in specific seasons by gifting him livestock, and he is separated from humans by electrified fences, and he did not forget to pay all these symbols in favor of protecting the forest, and nature from possible changes due to the industrial projects that preceded And that some tried to create them and led to the removal of trees.
The makers of the work presented more than one scene to emphasize the reverence of the people of the island for the jinn, but it was not a real addition to the work, and if it was deleted, it would not affect the rhythm or the narrative structure.
And the work makers condemned the woman who takes care of the forest and leads the village, in behavior similar to religious leadership. She did not smile once throughout the work, and showed her interest in her granddaughter Liv (Feville Sogard Holm) to lead the people of the island after her, while the granddaughter fidgets and seriously thinks about escaping to the city.
Daughters and sons
The opening scene bears a clear warning that nothing should be tampered with in the forest, as the farmer Müller (Rasmus Hamrich) ties a cow in the middle of a black circle and moments later it is devoured, while the farmer sneaks out with fear and caution, and in return we find the young girl (Josephine) the daughter of the family who She arrives on vacation on the island sneaking out of curiosity to be the main driver of the ensuing terrifying drama.
And the series presented a pattern in dealing with the daughter’s mistakes, as the mother panics and sets out to calm her down and the father helps her, and so on, from the beginning of her discovery of the dwarf genie, causing her to kill the first human, until her infiltration into the forest and causing the gate of terror to open on the entire island, and far from the fact that the matter seems somewhat absurd and stereotypical Before the author, who could push another person to cause some terror, the family’s dealings with her two sons came devoid of paternal guidance, and full of that intense emotionality without the slightest attempt to hold each person responsible for his actions, which is what the island’s lady and protector of her beliefs, Grandma Karen, drew attention to. (Anna Eleanor), but she met her fate in the end, as the creatures of the jinn preyed on her.
And the grandmother, who was keeping the peace of the island, was killed after the work makers lost her all possible sympathy, as she wanted Josephine to present a victim to protect the island, and also to take responsibility for the chaos she caused, which is a ruling that the author is almost the author of and not the logic of events, as the director presents the grandmother from the beginning As a repellent, assertive, unemotional character, he eventually makes a villain out of her, and then ends the work with the scene of Liv, who should have inherited leadership from her grandmother, joining the townspeople on their journey back.
Perhaps the real crisis in the hasty industry of dramas are those statements that the author wishes to push as a message for his work, without the logic of events being the judgment of matters.
Dramatic characters in any work of art need a degree of respect befitting the fact that they are presented to an intelligent viewer who can distinguish between the statements of the character and the sayings of the work maker that he puts on the tongues of his heroes by force, without their personal characteristics or the logic of the events being a motive for them.