The boarding school: the heights It’s become a curious phenomenon since premiering in 2021 on Amazon Prime Video. Despite its obvious storyline and pacing flaws, the first season became a hit with audiences. So much so that the platform has decided to expand and deepen the story with eight new chapters. On this occasion, the controversy returns to the boarding school and its intrigues. AND finally opts for a precise tone.
After the criticism that previous chapters received for their failure to show a definite plot, The boarding school: the heights explore the suspense. And it does so with far more skill and good storytelling decisions than its multi-screen debut. Even so, the series takes a bumpy road again trying to interconnect different stories with each other and offer its characters new scenarios.
Of course, it’s a risk. The boarding school: the heights bases its effectiveness on the script’s precarious balance between a hint of enigmatic depth and an entertaining melodrama. Also in the attempt to sustain a seemingly convoluted story of some simplicity.
The second season retains the light and experimental feel of the source material, but explores the possibility of mature solidity. It doesn’t succeed every time – its big flaw is not finding tone and rhythm – but it manages to hold its own as a cohesive narrative. Like its version of Antena 3, The boarding school: the heights is a visit from two different genres that come together at different times.
On the one hand, a slightly gothic air which is more felt in its second season and which the plot benefits from. At the other extreme, his insistence on youthful identity and mystery as a backdrop. Between the two things The boarding school: the heights retraces the feeling of confusion left by its first season and finds its identity. It’s no longer a version of more successful material or a horror-tinged story with teenage faces. It’s a curious hybrid between the mystery that surrounds the boarding school – transformed for the occasion into one more character – and the link with latent darkness. One that manages to achieve in its most elaborate moments but isn’t always comprehensible or linear in its lowest.
A journey to a series with its own face
The boarding school: Black Lagoon it became a considerable success from its inception in 2007 until its end three years later. The combination of suspense, teenage stories, and an unabashed emphasis on pure entertainment made the production a guilty pleasure. In fact, most of its 7 seasons they became ratings phenoms. Moreover, the unique interplay between suspense and later romantic-leaning drama came to create its own style. For your cancellation, The boarding school: Black Lagoon It was already part of the history of Spanish television.
With an obvious influence on series based on the perception of suspicion, The boarding school: the heights to the possibility of a gradual suspension
For its international version with The boarding school: the heights, Amazon Prime accentuated its youthful product persona and added the perception of a latent twisted mystery. The result of his second season is an increased feeling of claustrophobia. If in the first season, the boarding school – as an institution – had the oppressive atmosphere of forced isolation, in its new chapters it becomes more elaborate. The long shots of the desolate landscape or the whispered conversations. There is a constant perception that every student could be at risk or about to be in unknown danger. However, the hint game is not as efficient as one might expect. Especially when the characters are blurred in the insistence of the scenario by the emotional blackness of the context.
With an obvious influence on series based on the perception of suspicion, The boarding school: the heights to the possibility of progressive suspension. And this is perhaps one of his uncomfortable points: much of the first six chapters unfolds amid multiple puzzles. Again and again, The boarding school: the heights it hints at a resolution – or at least, a definitive answer – to arrive at another crossroads. With such acting — which ends up being entertaining and, at worst, exhausting — the production progresses with effort. The same goes for the characters. The shifts in structure and meaning of their intentions eventually turn them into a strange web of unresolved narrative threads.
The boarding school: Las Cumbres, a poorly planned game
Ultimately, what seems really important to the plot is the show’s ability to destabilize. Time and again, narrative twists lead to unexpected plot points, character behaviors and startling revelations. But the inescapable question is to what extent a story can admit of surprises and revelations that bring only so many others.
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With quasi-anonymous characters but its emphasis on Gothic mystery supported by a better atmosphere, the second season of The boarding school: the heights attractive but confusing. It may be a harmless but trickster game of mirrors. Much like the source material was during its long period of success.
