Crime
Long Bright River
Long Bright River is a fairly standard mystery thriller with a big theme at its core: choices. But its problematic content makes it a touch choice to watch.
New Raccoon City.
Never mind about the old Raccoon City. (Hint: It was destroyed by the Umbrella Corporation after their pharmaceutical experiments there led to a zombie outbreak.)
But nobody talks about that. Probably because nobody knows about it.
Umbrella covered it up. Then they built a shiny new city in South Africa where their employees could work and live in perfect harmony.
And that’s where the Wesker family winds up.
Albert Wesker (a notorious villain from the Resident Evil franchise) moves with his two teenage daughters to New Raccoon City so he can continue to work on his latest drug: Joy.
Unfortunately, Wesker used strains of the T-virus—which first caused the zombie outbreak in Old Raccoon City—to create this antidepressant.
You’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now.
Soon, test subjects begin displaying zombie-like symptoms. Then, Wesker’s own daughter, Billie, becomes infected after sneaking into the lab.
What happens next is unveiled as the show progresses. But fast-forward 14 years to the year 2036, and Wesker’s other daughter, Jade, is researching a zombie-ridden London. Approximately six billion T-virus zombies occupy the planet now. And the remaining 300 million humans are separated into factions (with the Umbrella Corporation controlling the world’s strongest military power).
Jade is looking for a cure. The Umbrella Corporation is looking for Jade. But whether that’s to help her save the planet or stop her from ending their reign remains to be seen.
The Resident Evil franchise is no stranger to bloodshed and horror—both in video games where it began and on the big screen. And this continuation of the story on TV is no exception.
Once infected, humans mutate into zombies who are only interested in spreading their disease by biting healthy humans. Animals grow into giant flesh-eating monsters. Both can smell blood, and there’s plenty of that too. Meanwhile, struggling survivors fight each other as much as the beasts that hunt them. And when guns aren’t available, a chainsaw or pipe will do the job just as well.
If that sounds bloody, it is. And foul language is nearly as abundant as gore and guts, with excessive uses of the f-word, particularly from a teenage Jade toward her father.
Animal cruelty plays a part, too, since Billie’s suspicions that the “green” Umbrella Corporation is experimenting on animals is what leads her to break into the lab to begin with. LGBT relationships are present as well, and there are lots of crude jokes about sex.
An adult Jade scoffs at a man who believes the zombie apocalypse is “God’s will.” And if Jade’s skepticism about God isn’t enough, the Umbrella Corporation uses lyrics from a traditional children’s Sunday school song to market the Joy drug to kiddos.
All in all, anyone familiar with Resident Evil (either the games or the films) won’t be surprised by this content. But that doesn’t mean they have to partake in it, either.
In 2022, the Wesker sisters break into the Umbrella Corporation and discover terrible experiments. In 2036, Jade conducts research on zombies.
A woman pokes a rabbit with a sharp object to make it bleed then releases it to attract zombies. The rabbit narrowly escapes. The woman then accidentally cuts her own arm, and the zombies chase her instead. She is tackled by one but manages to activate a flamethrower trap before it can bite her. The flamethrowers kill all the other zombies as well.
A giant, mutated caterpillar attacks a woman, knocking her out. A group of people with guns manage to kill the creature before it can kill the woman (though we hear she has internal bleeding and a concussion). A man gets shot in the head at point-black range before his men are all gunned down as well. People watch a video of soldiers and zombies fighting. A woman jumps from a high location into a field full of zombies to escape Umbrella (she is OK).
Two teenage girls get into a fistfight after one jokes about killing deer and eating vegans. Later, the same girl smashes her burrito into the other girl’s face. Someone in a mask then attacks the bully while she is using the bathroom, and we see her later with a bleeding face, applying an ice pack to her head. Jade encourages Billie to punch another girl in the breast to earn their classmates’ respect. We hear that Billie broke a guy’s leg because he kicked a child. A teen girl jokes about wanting to die.
A dog, which has been infected with the T-virus, attacks the Weskers, biting Billie badly on the shoulder before Jade beats it to death with a fire extinguisher. The girls find several animals locked in cages at the Umbrella Corporation (which upsets them since Umbrella claims not to test on animals). Billie looks at pictures of lab rats online. We also hear that she broke into her old school to free the frogs used for experiments in the science lab. The Wesker girls steal their dad’s phone to break into his lab.
A girl complains about the lack of racial diversity in New Raccoon City. There are multiple sarcastic comments about sex, porn and hard drugs. Teen girls gawk at some teen boys, calling them “hot” when they remove their shirts. We hear that Billie was nearly expelled for stealing alcohol and fighting, and that people thought she was “psycho.” Teens are incredibly rude to adults. (One girl smacks her dad’s tablet in anger and yells at him.) Albert threatens a man’s job when the man threatens to have Billie arrested.
Albert questions the integrity of marketing Joy since it’s only meant for serious mental health issues. The company ignores him, creating an ad for children using a holographic teddy bear singing lyrics from a tradition children’s Sunday School song (“I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart”). We later see Albert draw blood from both his daughters before injecting the blood into himself as a medical remedy of some sort.
We hear about 25 uses of the f-word, as well as the s-word, “a–,” “a–hole,” “b–tard,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s and Christ’s names are abused. Someone makes a crude hand gesture.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Long Bright River is a fairly standard mystery thriller with a big theme at its core: choices. But its problematic content makes it a touch choice to watch.
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