In “Katla” from Iceland, clones appear in a completely mysterious way near an active volcano. But the Netflix series resists the urge to rush things.
A small Icelandic village, looking dystopian, covered in ash. The eruption of Katla, one of the most active volcanoes in Iceland, has been going on for more than a year. Most of the residents have left the village, the environment has become too oppressive, depressing and hostile to life. But a few have stayed, holding their positions in their ashes-covered hometown, trying to preserve what is possible.
The atmosphere of the Netflix series “Katla” is mysteriously captivating right from the start. Every character seems to be surrounded by a secret, and something unusual seems to be going on in the volcano itself. Finally, a woman covered in ash from head to toe emerges from the darkness. She is confused, freezes, but at least she can remember her name. It is a woman who worked in a local hotel 20 years ago – and has not aged a day.
So the volcano brings back the dead, is the obvious, carelessly drawn conclusion. What follows, however, is not your typical creepy “The dead come back to life” mystery. The series quickly throws us out of this theory, because the Ashes woman is neither a missing person nor a dead person: The woman who worked in the local hotel twenty years ago went back to her home country Sweden – where she still lives today. So there are now twice.
Then more ash people appear. A missing sister believed to have been lost in the ice for a year. A geologist’s child who died in a car accident. But things get stranger and stranger, because soon people who now live in the village come back as ash people. People essentially encounter themselves. Just a few years younger, healthier, or happier.
The eeriness in “Katla” is also the by-product of the slow narrative pace. For a series in which clones mysteriously appear near a dangerously active volcano, “Katla” resists the urge to rush things. The beings identified by some characters as changelings – in the spirit of Icelandic legends – are simply there and now live their lives.
The characters behave disturbed throughout the series and try to process what is happening, while the ash clones, all of whom retain memories of their former selves, seem strangely uninvolved. Finding out who these people are and why they came is the series’ central mystery. It seems as if the ash people are created through grief, loss and regret, through feelings of lost opportunities that the people in the village are going through. What seems obvious in a dead child only becomes clear at second glance with some of the ash beings.
Researchers are trying to understand the phenomenon of the clones apparently formed in the volcano. The geologist comes to an explanation that brings the series, which is actually located in the narrative of Icelandic sagas, into the sci-fi area. But what is still kept so vague that it does not seem forced – and above all does not cancel out the original explanatory approach of changeling.
Given that the series ends on a cliffhanger, it’s unclear whether “Katla” is intended as a single narrative or as the first chapter of an even bigger, mind-blowing story. Both would work, because the artfully chilling narrative can go on and on.
“Katla”, on Netflix, one season.
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