This review of HBO’s The Third Day Episode 3, titled “Sunday – The Ghost,” contains full spoilers. To remind yourself where we left off, read our review of The Third Day episode 2.
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The Third Day hit its third episode this week, and while some answers to the preceding two weeks of enigmatic build-up are provided, the degree of satisfaction one draws from those answers will depend greatly on the degree of ambiguity they can tolerate from their serialized suspense thrillers. When last we left erstwhile protagonist Sam (Jude Law), he’d gotten himself beaned on the head, had a burlap sack tossed over it, and was dragged off by the ne’er-do-well residents of island enclave Osea for…reasons.
Sam, still dealing with the aftermath of a marijuana high, is having a hard enough time differentiating reality from drug-induced fantasy, so the exposition dumped on him by his captors can’t go down particularly easy, especially as it finally explains why he’s been proclaiming some kind of long sublimated familiarity with this place, despite never having been there previously. Suffice it to say, the answers he’s given don’t exactly compel him to want to stay, and once again he attempts to hightail it over the narrow causeway connected Osea to the mainland, even as the tide is rapidly approaching.
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Here again director Marc Munden shows his skill by heightening the tension of Sam’s predicament as he sets off on foot across the causeway, hoping against hope to somehow beat the clock and make it home. This production has consistently excelled on a technical level, as the jarring cuts, canted angles, and extreme close-ups put us squarely inside Sam’s head. And like the nightmares where you’re out to sea with the shoreline receding no matter how far and how fast you swim, so too does Sam see the mainland slip ever more out of reach as he’s enveloped by the encroaching waters.
It’s a powerful series of images, arguably the most effective of the show’s first three hours. Of course, given that said sequence occurs only a quarter of the way through this episode, we instinctively know Sam’s desperate bid for freedom will end in failure, and once he’s dragged back to Osea the rest of this chapter never quite matches the horrifying immediacy of the causeway sequence. Instead, we’re dragged further into the mire of Osea’s rather complicated backstory, which is piled so high with coincidence and contrivance it becomes difficult to remain too deeply invested.
This, despite Law continuing to put in a consistently strong effort, and he manages to forge an unlikely chemistry with Catherine Waterston’s Jess after having unburdened his conscience to her about his continued grief over his lost son. Needless to say, there’s something more going on with her, as there is with Emily Watson and Paddy Considine as the Martins, as well as Mark Lewis Jones as grieving father Jason. Most importantly, there’s something more to the seemingly random series of events that pulled Sam to the island in the first place.
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Unfortunately, in this case, more also means less, as the story follows such a familiar trajectory that even if the specifics vary, we already have a general sense of where things will go, and most importantly where they won’t. Whether it’s Sam finally making contact with someone via his cell phone (at last, signal!) or making his way onto a boat for yet another desperate escape attempt, the tropes of these tales are just too firmly established to truly surprise, so it’s a lot of waiting for things to finally wind back around to the inevitable. This becomes especially, frustratingly true in the episode’s closing moments, which does offer some degree of closure but is too nebulous in execution to be truly satisfying.
Source: IGN.com HBO's The Third Day Episode 3 Review