Hello horror fanatics and aficionados, it’s me, Slick Dungeon, back to review the penultimate episode of the Netflix horror hit Archive 81. There may be spoilers for the first seven episodes in this review so if that sort of thing bothers you go watch the show first and then come back to read.

The first six episodes of this show really tell us the story of Dan who is in our present and Melody who is in the 1990’s. Throughout the story we’ve been getting little tidbits of a cult that seems to have taken up residence at a place called the Visser building, once an old manor and then an apartment building in New York city. While the portions of Melody’s story would still be considered somewhat of a period piece, the seventh episode goes the furthest back in time so far all the way to 1924 to become a proper period piece. We get more context of the videos Dan has been restoring from that era which were a series of shows called the Circle. Turns out the circle was a straight up cult who seems to worship a demon/alien/god or something tied up with a comet.

I’ve said all along this show is going to hinge on its final episode for me but again if it is aliens, I’m kind of over it. Still, whatever this thing is, strange things are definitely happening and we’re about to get the really big reveals in the next episode. The show has done a good job maintaining the tone and the pace enough to make this fairly interesting and this episode still delivers but I’m not sure it’s as impactful as the makers of the show would like. Because we’ve been seeing what Dan sees and experiencing what Melody experiences, it was already pretty clear there is a cult involved and at least one of the shocking moments is not shocking because, well, we already saw it in the restored footage.

Whether or not the show can wrap all this up in an interesting way remains to be seen but I’m looking forward to the final episode to see how it ends.

Horrifically yours,

Slick Dungeon