A buddy of mine is a huge fan of the book, Dark Matter, and the fact he said the TV show was fantastic was good enough for me to give it a try. To be honest, I am a massive fan of sci-fi and anything that deals with multiple dimensions is always going to get my attention. This is an Apple TV original and as far as I am aware, it is a limited series with no plans for a second season, which as I will explain later, I am more than ok with.
How to Download Dark Matter
Dark Matter was released on May 8, 2024. You can stream it from Apple TV. Click on the Download button at the end of this review and make your choice.
The Movie Review
Before we get into the story, Dark Matter has a truly amazing cast. Joel Egerton plays multiple versions of a character called Jason and he is incredible. The way he is able to change, depending on which Jason he is playing is very well done. I am always down for anything with Jennifer Connelly in it and she is as awesome and beautiful as ever playing Jason’s wife, Daniela.
Without going into the whole cast list, Dark Matter works so well as every actor fully commits, Alice Braga and Jimmi Simpson are also awesome in their roles too. The thing with this show is that unless you have read the book (which I had not) you are better knowing as little as possible about what is going on.
The Plot and Storytelling
The basics of the plot are that we have a family man called Jason who works in the physics department at a college. Jason is a great family man, always putting his family first. One night as he is walking home, Jason is kidnapped by someone who is wearing a weird mask. He is taken to a remote place, stripped and drugged!
Now that alone is bad, but when Jason wakes up, he soon realizes that he is in an alternate reality where things are similar, but also quite different. Jason also realizes that the person who kidnapped him and dumped him in this alternate reality is another version of himself. Dark Matter is a very interesting show in that when you try and explain it to someone, it sounds super complicated, but with the way the story is told, it is actually very easy to follow.
Jason ends up teaming up with a character called Amanda. Amanda is the girlfriend of the other Jason and he is going to help the original Jason (or Jason 1 if you prefer) get back to his reality. There are many twists and turns here and the stuff where they go to the many different realities was so well done and awesome. There is a scene where Jason and Amanda end up in a weird corridor full of realities and that blew my mind the first time that I saw it.
Series Length and Conclusion
There are nine episodes in Dark Matter and each episode lasts around an hour. I feel that they got the pacing near perfect for this show and remember how I said it is a “limited series”. Well, for me, I feel that they did wrap things up very well at the end, but at the same time, they left the door open for a potential spin-off with another character being the main focus. If they do that, great, but I do feel like Jason’s story was brought to a close pretty much perfectly.
