Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Undone

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Beautiful, Creative, Mysterious, Genuinely Original

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2019

I binge watched this after hearing the interview on NPR and stumbled across it accidentally the day before its release. It's a brilliant concept that keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's the right mix of psychological thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, time travel novella, and murder mystery all wrapped into one beautiful little package. The episodes are great bite-sized chapters that keep you enthralled and guessing where the story will go next. I'm torn between desperately hoping there will be a season 2 and hoping there won't as it's nearly perfect in the way it concludes. Its approach hearkens back to the best of the science fiction of the 1920s and 30s with a modern twist, and sensual visuals that create a vividly porous connection between the real and surreal.

392 people found this helpful

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J.S Free Opinions

Schizophrenia is not a super power

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2019

Schizophrenia and mental illness runs in my family so and I know full well what it looks like and even how it feels so I was very concerned where this would go. There are moments in this show where tears have ran down my face because I know exactly what it feels like to have a mind like that and how it feels to be so alone and caged by your own brokenness. Although this was creative, inspirational at times and I hope people come to be more loving and understanding to those with mental illnesses, I also hope that no one down plays the seriousness of it and turn it into something magical and glorious. Because the reality the TRUE reality is it's hell not a super power. I am thankful to God I was healed a few years ago of all of these illnesses by His Holy Spirit. But some people are not and it never escapes me the struggle they go through everyday just trying to survive. I've been there and I hope one day to help others find their own freedom but if not I will love them and have compassion on them always.

663 people found this helpful

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J.S Free Opinions

Schizophrenia is not a super power

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2019

663 people found this helpful

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Bingo

Great story, writing, acting, production, etc...With an unfortunate end to otherwise perfect story.

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2019

Interesting, very well written and acted......However.....{mild spoilers ahead}

I feared from the beginning that this would end with some ambiguous twist, and many fears were realized. Maybe I'm just not getting it, but they inserted an unnecessary ambiguous note right at the end, just to make us think....maybe she isn't mentally ill? I have no problem at all with this being entirely the product of someone's mental illness, nor with it all being real. But, to insert the ambiguous burst of light art the end either trivialized or obfuscated the attempt to illustrate how mental illness can be difficult and debilitating, or it made little sense in telling us that she wasn't mentally ill after all, Therefore glorifying schizophrenia. schizophrenia is more often than not a bit like a living hell for people, what they see is usually the product of their fears, not some rollicking adventure through time.

Lastly, while many film makers seem to want to leave their art as open to interpretation as possible, the fact is that their audience more often than not wants a clear storyline.

Imagine if Hansel and Gretel ended when they were about to push the witch into the oven, but never told you what happened next. Pretty crappy end. Just like this, i was very pleased that this wasn't going to do that, then inn the last five seconds...BAM! they did it.

This is why so many people don't like artsy films, it's not the avant garde style, it's not the innovative stories, it's the fact that when we consume stories, we want an ending. This was like reading a book with the last paragraph scribbled out. Otherwise, i absolutely loved it, but to hell with this ending!

24 people found this helpful

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Mark Wandrey

I really tried.

Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2019

As a sci-fi writer, I tried as hard as I could. But monkey time...

1) the plot is far too slow to develop
2) the main character is completely unlikable. Pretty much a psycho. Horrible spouse, horrible sister, horrible daughter. She's a triple threat!
3) the story spends more time building racial stereotypes than a plot
4) lastly I've about had it with 'woke' shows. If they'd spend the time developing a cohesive, well paced story that they spent hitting social justice points, crapping on Texas, and generally checking off PC marks for street cred, it would be a lot better show.
5) These points are particularly sad because the acting and animation mesh perfectly into a show I >really< wanted to get to know more about. But after the 4th episode when the main character is screeching at some caricatures of reenactors (showed as a bunch of white guys in a circle shooting at each other point blank with muskets, har har har), I was done.

24 people found this helpful

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Alric the Red

Something About It Didn't Quite Work (for Me) (SPOILER ALERT)

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2019

This is visually stunning, so even quotidian scenes are compelling, provided you're buying into the idea that something more interesting will be forthcoming. Colors burst and swirl, scenes morph from one to the other. However, if this didn't have at its core a sci-fi element, along with the rotoscoping, I don't think I would have sat through as much as I did. Here's the story.

Alma Winograd-Diaz is a bit dysfunctional, in that she lets the deep emptiness inside of her define her. Her father left her on Halloween night when she was a girl, and died in an auto accident. This she feels is the linchpin in her malaise, and her sense of despair poisons everything in her life. Distraught after breaking up with her boyfriend, she sees her dead father on the side of the road, is distracted for an instant, and gets into wreck that puts her in a coma for two weeks. Here's where the mystery begins.

Her dead father visits her and tells her she has a shamanic heritage, which includes the ability to alter time. This is also connected with a mysterious research program he was conducting. Under his hallucinatory tutelage, he teachers her how to master time travel. He tells her he was murdered that Halloween night, and he needs her help in solving the mystery, thus preventing it. If they succeed, the entire timeline will be changed, and he'll be part of the family, mitigating the psychological harm that resulted from his absence.

This is a fairly compelling story, and the short episodes make it easy to endure when the dialogue goes into places that aren't that interesting. We're drawn to this because there's some sort of science fiction nugget in there. The mystery within the mystery is a question that threatens this new reality: is she really experiencing this stuff, or is she a schizophrenic, as her own grandmother was diagnosed. As the story progresses, the evidence validates Alma as experiencing a heightened reality, as she is able to take back from her trips in time factual elements about which she was previously unaware. She learned, for instance, that it was her mother who'd broken into her father's lab that night. There was no way to learn this.

The overarching goal stringing the episodes together was to save her father, to prevent him from going to the lab that Halloween night. All would be right with the world then. However, after that's accomplished, for some reason, she has to realign the timelines by going to an Aztec pyramid. That's where the internal logic breaks down. We know for a fact that she was actually doing the time traveling, somehow seeing these past events, because facts previously hidden from her were revealed. So she wasn't schizophrenic. When her father decides to remain with Alma that fateful Halloween night, the effect on the timeline should have been immediate, changing everyone's memories, and even having the father attend his daughter Becca's wedding.

I won't reveal the very end, but the fact that she had to drive to Mexico didn't work with the internal logic. The very ending suggests he emerged from the pyramid, but you never see this, yourself. The end credits roll. This was an artsy ending that undermined the series' directness. So much emotional wringing requires a complete resolution. Instead, we got a gimmick to get people talking, and it will convince some that it's worth discussing. For me it was a cop out.

There was something worth seeing there, if just for the visual flourishes. But I would have liked to have a more captivating story to go along with it. It's not a series you'd watch more than once, because once you've seen it, you've seen it all. And it's not something I would strongly recommend to others.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

17 people found this helpful

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Jedediah Smith

These reviews....

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2019

I love how the reviews for this range from Born Again Christian to 20-year-old Incel. Ridiculous. Anyway I enjoyed the show but I did feel like the ending was a minor cop-out, despite being intended as a cliffhanger or a "we'll leave it ambiguous because mental illness or superpower" but it told a decent story from an interesting perspective. Honestly feel like the fantastical aspects of the narrative were a little underplayed, and that the sister was so unsympathetic that it threatened to sink the thing, but overall it's definitely worth watching and anything that gives more exposure to indigenous cultures is a good thing at least in that sense.

But man, these reviews.

15 people found this helpful

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Edge

Really wanted to like it.

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2019

I wanted to like it. A lot. First, I didn't find the animation technique distracting. If anything, it lent a certain surrealism to the episodes that fit well with the subject matter. And as others have mentioned, Rosa Salazar (Alma) is very good at portraying emotion and sincerity via animation (see Alita: Battle Angel for an even better example of this). She is truly a gifted actor with a promising future.

-- Mild spoilers below. --

It was a slog at times, however, as it spent a bit too much time with the relationships of Alma's family and that of her boyfriend, and too little time with the core plot of finding out what happened to her father. I like soap opera as much as the next person (Downton Abbey, etc.), and I recognize that some of it was necessary. But when you interject a lot of it into what is basically a mystery, particularly in an abrupt manner, it stalls the basic plot and demands too much patience from the viewer. I found the constant breaks back from Alma's "dream state" in order to deal with real world issues tiring after a while.

Lastly, though I liked Alma, particularly her hilarious penchant for brutal honesty, the writers decided to add political and even racial bias to the mix that had no relationship whatsoever to the story. It's a shame, as it so distracted from what was otherwise a compelling character that it eventually undermined my sympathy for what she was going through. It's frustrating to have your enjoyment of a show sabotaged like this, and it's getting harder and harder these days to find one that doesn't fall prey to it.

8 people found this helpful

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rmann

Horrible ending for a really good show

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2019

liked the journey butchered the ending. Like Lost and the Netflix show, "The OA", Undone is an amazing ride. Great concept, great writing and performances... all the way up to the ending, where there is no ending. I find it annoying when writers take the hack route with their endings, "Weeellll, I wanted the audience/reader to decide blah blah blah". Oh Please!

You're telling the story - it either is or it isn't. She's got powers or she's crazy. Make up your mind, pick an ending and go for it. This wishy-washy, "I'll leave it up to you to decide", storytelling is infuriating!! It's as if they wanted onscreen with you, get you interested, get you hooked and then just have poochy the dog return to his home planet - the end (Simpsons reference for those of you who don't know).

I would have given this 5 stars, I wanted too but the writers screwed up. They thought they were being clever but they only got hacky. Hack writing. Hack hack hack hack hack!!!! When you write a story you create a beginning, middle and end. That's how it's done!!

So if you opt to watch just know that the end sucks.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Dante Giovanni

Insufferable protagonist mars an interesting exploration of mental illness

Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2019

Undone tries some interesting things, exploring the non-linear time, dream logic, mysticism, and quantum dynamics. It also looks at mental illness or the perception of mental illnesses in a mostly tasteful manner (mostly...). Obviously, the visuals are sublime, and fit the subject matter quite well, a la Linklater's Waking Life.

The main issue with the show is that the main character (and, in fact, the vast majority of the characters by the end) is just so unlikable it's difficult to really commit stakes in the show. She is rude, selfish, childish, unambitious, and actively works to sabotage those around her. I know that's done on purpose, but there is a way to do it such that the character isn't completely grating.

2 people found this helpful

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Frank Castle

Half-Done

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2020

Not bad at all. Makes you think deeply about time and reality, about the mind and consciousness. All of the characters are flawed. This makes following them through the slower moments worthwhile.

I could have done without the anti-white sentiments and the anti-male statements, but they are worth cringing through. Trust me. The writers depict the white family as cold, racist, and dumb. Only worth marrying for the money. (Spoiler-->) The sister cheats on the white fiance twice. The girls cover it up as if it's OK. Yet the girls' father is a white guy. Who also turns out to be a bad guy ultimately. I still don't understand the quiet racism we allow in movies. But, if you are secure, you can overlook it to get to the meat of the story.

The ending is weak, but perhaps appropriate? The animation is essential to the story--even if it gets extremely annoying. That said, the actors are really skilled. Their performances help draw your attention away from squiggly lines and shuddering pictures.

Most importantly, there are a few twists that are really enjoyable. The writing is pretty good. But the series feels unfinished. Kind of like a short story.

Helpful

Ellie

Not what I was expecting

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2020

I enjoy watching sci-fi and supernatural-type content. So...reading the description of the show and of some of the episodes beforehand, I was thinking this woman gets into an accident and, afterwards, has the ability to move through time, see her dead father, etc. Sounds interesting like The Sixth Sense or something. As I watched each episode, seeing how disjointed the events were and how people were looking at/treating Alma as though she had a mental illness, I realized the show's descriptions misled me. I finished the series because it was short and I thought I might as well see it through and maybe, in the end, it will surprise me. But it's not about a girl with a superpower (to borrow another reviewer's word); it's about a girl with schizophrenia. So, then what I didn't get is, since the weird events starting happening after her car accident, did she suddenly become schizophrenic at that point, not having had it before? Was it the result of a brain injury or was it an underlying condition that was brought to the surface as a result? Didn't make sense. Maybe I was missing something. At any rate, while I can appreciate its depiction of schizophrenia, it wasn't the supernatural tale I was hoping for based on the description.

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