In Scavengers Reign, there is a species of seemingly simple alien creatures that utilizes telepathy to order other alien creatures to bring it food, and one of this species uses this ability to control a person by way of wordlessly communicating and manipulating the person through dream-like evocation of memories and attached emotions. To what end? The creature’s mere sustenance? When later the relationship becomes symbiotic, and the creature’s actions take new directions, as unexplained as they are aggressively direct, deeper questions arise of its motives and the true nature of this relationship. What is this thing really? Is it really just some creature? Is it meant to be a symbolic representation of something to the human? Could it be both? How does this all work really? Big, compounding questions like these abound in the show, and these are just a small piece of one of multiple characters’ intersecting journeys in the collection of monumental mystery, horror, and wonder that is Scavengers Reign.
The show is a twelve-episode animated science fiction series created by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner adapted from their eight-minute 2016 short and developed by Titmouse, Inc. and Green Street Studios. In the depths of space, a starship was critically damaged above a mysterious alien planet teeming with strange flora, fauna, and other oft-dangerous natural peculiarities. Three small groups of crew managed to escape the catastrophe, becoming scattered across the planet’s surface. Each struggled to survive the alien conditions for presumably years while lacking any greater knowledge of events beyond that their group alone lived. An event is witnessed by all three groups that compels each to begin trekking across this violently hostile and beautifully wondrous planet towards a singular, distant destination.
Scavengers Reign‘s gorgeous animation and sublimely lush soundtrack would fight for stealing the show if they did not together cohesively generate such all-around effectively produced experiences scene after scene. Both elements are meticulously and lovingly crafted and deliver a broad variety of sights, sounds, and moods, not to be unexpected as the show jumps between disparate tales of multiple protagonists’ many day journeys across a planet’s many biomes.
“This place is like a puzzle. Nothing really makes sense the way we know it,” a protagonist states. The show depicts the setting of this alien world and all its many natural peculiarities as though one was surveying the quarantined zone of Annihilation with the documentarian approach of Planet Earth. And speaking of zones, sprinkle a bit of Tarkovsky mind-bending metaphysicality into the mix. You never know precisely what to expect as a fresh scene begins, but you come to expect something new and probably weird will be presented to you nonetheless. Every detail of the world is drowned in layers of unexplained mystique that quickly turns the planet into a mysterious character in its own right.
If all this sounds rather adult in nature, it generally is. The show is quite mature in its tone. It takes its time. It focuses on details. It shows rather than explains. It is unafraid to realistically portray the regular brutality of nature, gore and all. It regularly dives into imagery absurd, grotesque, and/or downright weird. Body horror abounds. Depiction of interpersonal relationships come across as natural and nuanced, as is the dialogue (and accompanying voice acting) that emerges from those. But, not all is realistic. There is a healthy dose of whimsical inventiveness, that borders on outlandish and would only ever work in animation, in the solution to quite a few plights as the episodes roll on. And it takes suspension of disbelief to accept how quickly derived and committed to some of these are. But these are relatively minor criticisms that do little to undo the overall exemplary quality of this show.
The scope of everything combined–telescopic focus upon both the details and broader mechanisms of the natural world alongside plots of humans which seem increasingly dwarfed as the show goes on by being mere parts of… something incomprehensibly bigger and ultimately existential–gives an overarching grand philosophical air to Scavengers Reign. Reminds me of a Terrence Malick film in this way. And yet it does this unpretentiously, not saying a word to the effect, merely through what it chooses to show of its deep world and how. Underneath layers of high production value, what Scavengers Reign wants to do at its core is epic and beautiful.
SCORE:
4.5 / 5
As of November 13th, 2023, Scavengers Reign is available to watch on Max.
