Devs
2020
Original language: English
- sci-fi & fantasy
- drama
- mystery
The story
Young computer engineer Lily Chan investigates the secretive development division of her employer, a cutting-edge tech company based in San Francisco, which she believes is behind the murder of her boyfriend.
What it’s like
Cold, glassy precision: long static shots of sterile rooms and sun-bleached San Francisco streets, with the Devs campus rendered in grey-green monochrome and mirrored surfaces that reflect the characters back at themselves. Compositions are symmetrical and deliberate, often holding on a figure in a vast empty frame while the camera barely moves, and the palette shifts to warm amber only in the memory-soft flashbacks. The score is a restrained, pulsing drone of low synths and bell-like tones, punctuated by long stretches of near silence, so that the hum of server rooms and the drip of rain become part of the unease. Vibe: clinical dread, quietly philosophical, a cold-sweat thriller that feels like staring at a screen too long at night. Pacing is slow and hypnotic, with episodes that linger rather than rush, and the emotional register stays intimate and anxious even as the ideas grow enormous. Its people move from grief and suspicion toward a bleak, fatalistic acceptance of what they cannot control. Violence is sudden and infrequent, with a few brutal, unshowy deaths; there is no gore for its own sake, but the overall mood is distressing and unsettling. Made for viewers who enjoy slow, cerebral sci-fi about determinism and who can tolerate a deliberately baffling, uncomfortable atmosphere.
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