Mike Flanagan makes us grapple with multiple truths to finally drive home a simple message

As the eight-episode drama streaming on Netflix goes back and forth, we are led into a compelling maze. One by one we become privy to the life and death of Roderick’s children, both legitimate and illegitimate. There is Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota), who wants to set up a sex bar, Leo (Rahul Kohli), a video game publisher and a drug addict. Kate Siegel as Camille is the public relations head, T’Nia Miller as Victorine LaFourcade is in charge of clinical trials. Samantha Sloyan as Tamerlane is creating a high-end wellness brand. Most of them have twisted lives. Amoral and consumed by ambition…one after another they die. Their deaths apparently are accidental yet there is a pattern to it, probably connected to Roderick and his sister Madeline’s (Mary McDonnell) past. How the brother-sister duo rise to head the company their father once owned, while disowning his offspring born out of wedlock, too is shrouded in mystery. Much here is mysterious, often bordering on macabre. As Roderick lets Dupin (Carl Lumbly) into his inner world, the sense of disquiet heightens. Phantasmagorical elements jostle with the harsh reality of pharma secrets. Skeletons tumble one after another.