Chosen Season 1 Review – A disappointing and poorly written sci-fi flick

Episode Guide

Episode 1 – | Review Score – 2.5/5
Episode 2 – | Review Score – 2.5/5
Episode 3 – | Review Score – 2/5
Episode 4 – | Review Score – 2/5
Episode 5 – | Review Score – 2/5
Episode 6 – | Review Score – 2/5

There are a number of mystery box shows on TV, and each have had varying degrees of success. From the mammoth LOST down to the lowly Tribes of Europa, there are a fair number of these shows desperate to grab one’s attention.

Netflix’s Chosen is he latest in a long line of shows trying to do just that. Armed with poor dialogue, a terribly written protagonist and some questionable logic, this Danish series is definitely not one to write home about.

The story here takes place in a sleepy town called Middelbo. 17 years prior, a meteor crashed down and it’s turned this place into a bit of a tourist hotspot. Emma knows a fair amount about this meteor but soon finds her life turned upside down when she starts to dig into the truth behind strange signals and the origins of the meteor itself.

Emma soon teams up with a ragtag group of teen investigators, including Mads, Marie and Elvis. With very thin characterization for them all, Emma engages in some pretty questionable behaviour across the six episodes.

Her motivations generally stem from trying to find out the truth, but there’s a thin love triangle in this that just doesn’t work. At its worst, it destroys Emma’s credibility as a likable character. Without getting too far into spoiler territory, she essentially plays them both off each other without batting an eyelid, stressing the importance of telling the truth and integrity to the whole group at the same time.

These character motivations and the wobbly moral compasses almost all of these guys have is ultimately the biggest deterrent to rallying behind Chosen. There is a mystery woven through the center of this but it’s never fleshed out or explained by season’s end. We do learn about Emma’s importance to the plot but beyond that, everything is left on a frustrating cliffhanger, baiting for a second season that may or may not arrive.

I’ve mentioned the dialogue before but it really is quite poor here. Characters are shockingly shallow, exuding exposition or family history when the plot calls for it. Most of the time though, the series happily skips along various different plot beats, one of which so painfully obvious that when the final “twist” arrives, you will have figured it out by the end of episode 1.

The irony here is that Emma is probably the least interesting character of the whole ensemble, but she receives the lion’s share of the screen-time. Marie is a far more complicated and deep player in this game but yet she’s never really given the time to actually grow.

Chosen is a pretty ironic name, if I’m honest, I certainly wouldn’t choose this one. If you’re looking for a compelling and thought provoking sci-fi flick, you won’t find that here. Likewise, if you want a fun, vibrant teen drama with sci-fi elements, that’s lacking too. Instead, what we’re left with then is a hollow shell of a drama in desperate need of extra editing and deeper character writing. This one’s a real disappointment.

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