Coventry Review of Tabula Rasa

Tabula Rasa (2017)

Slow-brooding supernatural mystery. Stick around, your patience will be rewarded!

[7/10 · 9 January 2018]

This is the second - after "Hotel Beau Séjour" - supernaturally themed TV-series that we are served here in Flanders (Belgium) in less than a year time! Series or films like these were practically never realized in this country before, but a new and inspired young generation of writers and directors stood up and clearly studied a lot of internationally acclaimed series for inspiration. With success, moreover, as both "Tabula Rasa" and "Beau Séjour" have been picked up by Netflix in the meantime. "Tabula Rasa" is perhaps not the greatest mystery/thriller series ever written, but it has a solid script with plenty of suspense and plot twists, as well as a versatile cast of intriguing characters. This is also the first, or at least to my knowledge, Belgian series that makes plenty use of great digital effects and make-up art, notably during dream sequences and hallucinations where people's faces vaporize into dust and a handful of violent death sequences in the final episodes. I was rather skeptical when I first heard the synopsis because it featured so many clichés and taboo subjects: a woman with amnesia, a mental institution, ghostly apparitions, a creepy old family mansion and a mysterious disappearance that links all these elements together. Admittedly some patience and tolerance is required at first, because the first three episodes are slow and uneventful. Around episode 4 and 5, just when you're beginning to fear that the screenplay leads to nowhere and the boring moments are becoming too numerous, the pacing shifts into a much higher gear and no less than three shocking and nearly unpredictable plot-twists occur. I read in other reviews and on forums that many viewers stopped watching halfway through the series and spread around bad publicity about "Tabula Rasa", but I would really encourage everyone to persist watching because especially the final three episodes are tense, adrenalin-rushing and astonishing. The very last denouement, which immediately also clarifies the until then vague title of the series, is certainly far-fetched, but also shocking and vile, and being a horror fan at heart, I really dug it! Veerle Baetens, the leading lady who also co-wrote the series, has never been my favorite Belgian actress, but she gives away a fantastic performance. Her character doesn't really evolve a lot, but she's simultaneously strong and vulnerable from begin to end. She's surrounded by a more than adequate supportive cast, including famous - in Belgium, at least - names like Peter van den Begin, Natali Broods, Gene Bervoets, Lynn Van Royen and François Beukelaers. Jonas Govaerts, another one of the writers and co-director, previously made the reputedly first Flemish backwoods horror entitled "Welp" (translated as "Cub") and that is also most definitely a film worth checking out.