Daybreak Season 1 Review

November 1, 2019 at 4:51pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a Netflix Original series that is really quite strange, it’s the apocalypse but a more fun one. At least, that’s what they try to rope you in on. It’s actually insanely gruesome, very dark and mixes a vastly strange collection of ideas together. I’d compare it to Sunset Overdrive with a higher level of gore and stronger language. For context, that’s a game where the apocalypse happens and it features wacky folks. It’s very similar in nature. That aside, this is weird as I’m not sure the target audience. It has an attitude of being for the younger audience with its messaging, while being far too adult in nature for them.

It’s not mature enough for any of the adult audience in my opinion, I suppose it might be targeting my age group directly but even that doesn’t quite seem right as it’s so overly dramatic and clearly aimed at younger ones. Moving onto the narrative, it’s all about Josh Wheeler (Colin Ford) who is a Canadian that’s dealing with the apocalypse while in the United States. A terrible fate for sure, but he’s making the best of it and having a good time. This series develops his character through the current time, and with many excessively long flashbacks.

This is how you understand the characters from his school that seem to be the only survivors in this large mostly kids only world. He’s after his love Sam Dean (Sophie Simnett) which in itself was a terribly setup plot that ends in a stupid way that is I suppose was trying to divert some expectations.

It was an awful ending quite honestly, with this show having only some moments that were bright. It had some neat concepts, Matthew Broderick was great in this and honestly it didn’t dig deep enough into its themes. Everything was so light, despite this trying to be impactful, and again that ending was just garbage quite honestly.

Aside from this being a silly walk through the wasteland, there were some side stories that were weakly developed and an impressively vast cast. The acting ranged from ok to quite bad. There were some cringe type moments, and some truly bad performances in this one. I will say that they absolutely nailed the aesthetic of the wasteland, no idea how they achieved that but serious props to the designer team behind this project.

Every single scene screamed apocalypse to the fullest degree, right on. The costumes were great for the characters and this helped greatly during some gory moments. I suppose the lead was charming enough, and I didn’t mind the surrounding folks despite some weaker development along with some worse acting among them. There’s a good sense of quality, and scale here. They had the setting right, but could have done more with the narrative. It had some mystery, but never did much with it.

The Conclusion

Daybreak Season 1 isn’t great, it’s incredibly ok with some poor acting but a generally great sense of atmosphere. The narrative was weak and I won’t be able to get over how silly things got towards the end. They had some decent enemy factions, but messed that up and only lightly touched upon the various groups out there. Some of it didn’t quite make sense, and the themes weren’t given their due. They tried to convey certain messages, but did so weakly and far too in your face.

Again, not sure the target audience on this one. I watched it, but felt the flashbacks were excessive and a drag. The character progressions were odd, some made sense whereas others were out of nowhere. It’s a weird show, its super gory which I liked and very graphic. It’s definitely something unique, I’ll give them that. I will also once again note the incredible work on the sets and costumes, nailed it there.

Daybreak Season 1 Review at Home with Streamed Viewing
Content Access was Provided by Netflix

Rating Overall: 6.2