Hello everybody! Back in March, I made a list of Netflix shows you can watch on quarantine (click here for that post). On the list was a South African show called Queen Sono. Also earlier this year, I discussed why South Korean movie Parasite won so many accolades. It seems like movies and shows from other countries are giving us amazing content with fresh stories and compelling characters. Recently, it seems that American shows are just not bringing that same heat.
Now, Mexico is bringing us a really good show called Control Z. I turned it on out of shear curiosity and became completely immersed. If I were going to compare it to anything, it kind of reminded me of I Know What You Did Last Summer or Scream mixed with a little Beverley Hills 90210. It does have one flaw that I’ll discuss later, but it still was addictive in the way it fleshed out the story. Let’s get into it!
About The Show
Sofia (Ana Valeria Becerril) is a young outsider in her high school. She’s troubled, but has an amazing power of observation. She knows things about her classmates by merely observing them from a quiet distance. Suddenly, the students, including Sofia, began receiving texts from a mysterious account called allyoursecrets. The texts state that someone intends to reveal their secrets. This causes complete chaos in the high school. There’s violence, betrayal, sexual indiscretions, and lots of lies. Sofia makes it her mission to find out who is behind the account.
We Are All Exposed
One thing that Control Z shows is that we are all vulnerable thanks to our smartphones. I mean this is something we all know and subconsciously accept. After all, the right hacker can hack anything, especially since a lot of phone content is cloud-based.
This Colegio Nacional (the high school in the show) is a microcosm of our present world. Someone accesses the students’ secrets and exposes them to the world. Imagine if someone did not like you enough to hack your phone and put all of your business in the street? That’s how we end up with celebrity nudes, influencers showing “receipts” of something their rival said or did, and so forth.
In Control Z, the stakes become extremely high. It’s not just “oops, now everyone’s seen my nudes”, the damage is severe to the students, parents, and educators in the show.
Tackling Tough Issues
The secrets these kids keep range from gender, sexuality, finances, betrayal. I mean these are BIG secrets. In a world where we tell the internet everything, you tend to forget that there are some things you do not want the world to know. It’s kind of genius how the mystery guy uses the students themselves to expose the secrets. So, no one can possibly know who is responsible because everyone is in collusion with the culprit. What’s poetic about this situation is if the students would’ve made the decision to divulge their secret, they probably would’ve saved themselves a lot of heartache.
There’s A Slight Problem
Though I thoroughly enjoyed Control Z, the series kind of showed it’s hand a little too early. I think I had three or four episodes left when I knew who did it and why. This was a tiny bit disappointing, but I hung in there because I was invested in the characters’ stories.
But…The Ending!
Even though the big mystery is revealed pretty early, the last episode’s ending was fantastic! There are so many surprises and shit absolutely hits the fan! Even though it ends on something of a cliffhanger, it still left me very satisfied with it’s ending and looking forward to the second season.
Overall
International media is absolutely killing it. I’m glad that Netflix is offering us great work from different places. It doesn’t matter the country of origin or the language. If you give me a great storytelling and fascinating characters, I will read subtitles and watch dubs all day long! Dear Netflix, bring me season 2 of Control Z. Thanks!
Wrapping It Up
Well, that’s it for my thoughts on Control Z. I just posted my thoughts on episode 10 of Tower of God over on Couch and Chill. I will see you later!
Couch Cruisin' 