Current:Home > MyThat 'True Detective: Night Country' frozen 'corpsicle' is unforgettable, horrifying art -Elevate Money Guide
That 'True Detective: Night Country' frozen 'corpsicle' is unforgettable, horrifying art
View
Date:2025-04-14 20:53:17
The "True Detective: Night Country" search for eight missing scientists from Alaska's Tsalal Arctic Research Station ends quickly – but with horrifying results.
Most of the terrified group had inexplicably run into the night, naked, straight into the teeth of a deadly winter storm in the critically acclaimed HBO series (Sundays, 9 EST/PST). The frozen block of bodies, each with faces twisted in agony, is discovered at the end of Episode 1 and revealed in full, unforgettable gruesomeness in this week's second episode.
Ennis, Alaska, police chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), who investigates the mysterious death with state trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), shoots down any mystical explanation for the seemingly supernatural scene.
"There's no Yetis," says Danvers. "Hypothermia can cause delirium. You panic and freeze and, voilà! corpsicle."
'True Detective' Jodie FosterKnew pro boxer Kali Reis was 'the one' to star in Season 4
Corpsicle is the darkly apt name for the grisly image, which becomes even more prominent when Danvers, with the help of chainsaw-wielding officers, moves the entire frozen crime scene to the local hockey rink to examine it as it thaws.
Bringing the apparition to the screen was "an obsession" for "Night Country" writer, director and executive producer Issa López.
"On paper, it reads great in the script, 'This knot of flesh and limbs frozen in a scream.' And they're naked," says López. "But everyone kept asking me, 'How are you going to show this?'"
López had her own "very dark" references, including art depicting 14th-century Italian poet Dante Alighieri's "Inferno," which shows the eternally damned writhing in hell. Other inspiration included Renaissance artworks showing twisted bodies, images the Mexican director remembered from her youth of mummified bodies and the "rat king," a term for a group of rats whose tails are bound and entangled in death.
López explained her vision to the "True Detective" production designers and the prosthetics team, Dave and Lou Elsey, who made the sculpture real. "I was like, 'Let's create something that is both horrifying but a piece of art in a way,'" López says.
The specter is so real-looking because it's made with a 3D printer scan of the actors who played the deceased scientists before it was sculpted with oil-based clay and cast in silicone rubber. The flesh color was added and the team "painted in every detail, every single hair, by hand," says López. "That was my personal obsession, that you could look at it so closely and it would look very real."
Reis says the scene was so lifelike in person that it gave her the chills and helped her get into character during scenes shot around the seemingly thawing mass. "This was created so realistically that I could imagine how this would smell," says Reis. "It helped create the atmosphere."
Foster says it was strange meeting the scientist actors when it came time to shoot flashback scenes. "When the real actors came, playing the parts of the people in the snow, that was weird," says Foster. "We had been looking at their faces the whole time."
veryGood! (3293)
Related
- Nevada attorney general revives 2020 fake electors case
- DeVonta Smith injury: Eagles WR takes brutal hit vs. Saints, leads to concussion
- Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen Share Professional Update in Rare Interview
- Election 2024 Latest: Trump and Harris work to expand their coalitions in final weeks of election
- Backstage at New York's Jingle Ball with Jimmy Fallon, 'Queer Eye' and Meghan Trainor
- MLB playoff picture: Wild card standings, latest 2024 division standings
- Mother of Georgia school shooting suspect indicted on elder abuse charges, report says
- Feds: Man accused in apparent assassination attempt wrote note indicating he intended to kill Trump
- Friday the 13th luck? 13 past Mega Millions jackpot wins in December. See top 10 lottery prizes
- Cincinnati Reds fire manager David Bell
Ranking
- Trump invites nearly all federal workers to quit now, get paid through September
- Breaking Through in the Crypto Market: How COINFEEAI Stands Out in a Competitive Landscape
- Ukrainian President Zelenskyy visits Pennsylvania ammunition factory to thank workers
- Lionel Messi sparks Inter Miami goal, but James Sands' late header fuels draw vs. NYCFC
- Where will Elmo go? HBO moves away from 'Sesame Street'
- 'Grieving-type screaming': 4 dead in Birmingham, Alabama; FBI investigating
- Diddy’s music streams jump after after arrest and indictment
- What to know about cortisol, the hormone TikTokers say you need to balance
Recommendation
The city of Chicago is ordered to pay nearly $80M for a police chase that killed a 10
BFXCOIN: Decentralized AI: application scenarios
Selena Gomez Explains Why She Shared She Can't Carry Her Own Child
Co-founder of Titan to testify before Coast Guard about submersible that imploded
Sam Taylor
American hiker found dead on South Africa’s Table Mountain
Caitlin Clark, Fever have 'crappy game' in loss to Sun in WNBA playoffs
Defense calls Pennsylvania prosecutors’ case against woman in 2019 deaths of 2 children ‘conjecture’