The Third Returns with Exits

Emon Hassan's The Third returns with its second episode - "Exits" - this Tuesday, May 1.  If ever there was a medium is the message movie, ala Marshall McLuhan, "The Third" would be it (even though McLuhan liked tetrads better than triads).   This is because the story, quiveringly, quietly terrifying, is told with not much content.

But I'll tell you a bit about the content, anyway.  An old woman is stretched out, eyes closed, in bed.  I thought she was dead, until she smiled.   Her son kneels by her bed, and cries.  Maybe she was dead, after all.

There's not much of the emotive actor Philip Willingham in this episode, except that haunting face, at the beginning.  But there's a guy who looks like an elderly Buddy Holly, or maybe Elvis Costello, if he'd continued with his Buddy Holly look.  And the woman and son.


The music by Kevin Mahonchak is superbly eerie and unsettling, as is the cinematography by Hassan.  The second episode of The Third premiering on the first (you knew that was coming) is just five minutes or so, with four more episodes to follow.  In case it's not apparent, there's a kind of music of the spheres, mathematical synchronicity to The Third, not only in its name but its presentation.


Reviewing last week's episode of Mad Men, I said it felt like it had been directed by some David - Cronenberg or Lynch.  The same could be said of the shot of other-worldliness to the cortex that is The Third.  You can catch the start of Exits (a rearrangement of exist) only on the Web, on Tuesday, over here - where you can also see all six episodes of last year's pilot, right now.  Click on the label "The Third" below to read my reviews of three of those.

The Third of the Third

The third episode of The Third - Emon Hassan's darkly mysterious new web series, starring Philip Willingham and in this episode Jessalyn Maguire - was put up nine days ago, which is three times three, so I thought I'd put up the review today.

Did I mention that this micro-series has M. Night Shyamalan vibes? That's because the tone is not only mysterious and brooding, but spiritual and supernatural.   The music by Kevin Mahonchak enhances this mood.  The action, which is dreamlike and about 33.33% non-verbal, takes place at the Trinity Church, on Broadway and Wall Street, that we saw in the last episode. Trinity ... another rendition of the third.

Our hero has a conversation with a woman, who has also been drawn to the church and its graveyard.  She tells our hero about a dream she's been having, which may have something to do with why she can't keep away from this place.  The dream is about something that happened in the past, in an earlier era, with horses, lanterns, and midwives.    There's a baby involved, and he's taken by two uniformed men, who shoot the midwife while they're at it ...

The baby's not the narrator's, who has this dream every night ... but we'll have to wait until February 1* for the next episode ... which is just three days away.

*Emon just told me that the 4th episode of The Third has been pushed forward to a February 8 premiere.    That's a week, or 7 days, and 4 (the fourth episode) plus 3 (of The Third) equals 7, so that still works for me.



The Third Pilot: Episode 3 from Emon Hassan on Vimeo.


See also See also The Third - Three Minutes - on the Third ... The Second of the Third

The Second of The Third

The second episode of  Emon Hassan's The Third appeared online January 4, four days ago.    Short, quietly mysterious, inscrutable, like the pilot, but with a glim more of a plot, and two more characters, too, which makes it a tad more scrutable, if that's a word (I don't know that glim is, either), but, even if not, you get the picture.

The hero, well played by Philip Willingham, gets an assignment by smart phone, to make contact with someone in Bryant Park.  (Ah, Bryant Park, scene of much of my third Phil D'Amato novel, The Pixel Eye - a worthy place for mystery if ever there was one.)   Sitting on a bench, waiting to talk to our hero, is someone who may be his older self.  (That's just my opinion.  The man on the bench is American and much older than our British hero.  But the two did look in some sense the same.  The closing credits, however, do list two guest performers - in addition to our hero - so chances are, at very least, that the guy on the bench is not a bloke, that is,  is not played by Willingham.)

Are you with me so far?  (If not, don't worry, you can watch the second episode right here in the comfort of this blog, below.)  Anyway, the third performer is a woman, and indeed the topic of conversation between the hero and maybe his older self on the bench.   The hero follows her to a small graveyard with crumbling tombstones near Ground Zero, in sight of the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site.   The hero is clearly affected by this, he looks at the tombstone of Moses Gale (one of the amenities in watching any movie online is how easy it is to stop the action and see what's going on - just like with a DVD or DVR, but of course not possible in the theater).  No, I don't know who Moses Gale was, but feel as if I should.

And here is where the second episode of The Third concludes.   There's clearly something serious, sinister, wrenching going on - a smidge of Nolan's Memento now, too - you can see it on the hero's face.

You can see for yourself in the complete second episode below, and you'll see me back here (a statement of my intentions, not a command to you, but you owe it to yourself to drop by) soon after the third of The Third finds its way to Internet screens.



The Third Pilot: Episode 2 from Emon Hassan on Vimeo.


See also The Third - Three Minutes - on the Third

The Third - Three Minutes - on the Third

A shout out or Tweet-sized review of Emon Hassan's new webseries, The Third, which premiered, appropriately enough, on the 3rd of December (yesterday), with a 3-minute episode.  Lots of powerful things come in three's - Hegel's dialectic, the 3 pyramids of Giza, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy to name three (ok, I'll add in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, either Star Wars trilogy, and the Godfather trilogy, now that The Third's got me going on this). 

I'm not saying that The Third has anything in common with these other behemoth triads - certainly not in length -  but it does have something in the sparse, speechless, evocative 3-minutes of the premiere.   I can't say just what, as yet, except it conveys a sense of murky foreboding quite clearly.   Think, maybe, Primer, I don't know.

All right, this was a little longer than a Tweet.  But the premiere does follow below. 


The Third - Pilot from Emon Hassan on Vimeo.
Episode 1 of 4.

About The Third
New York City holds many mysteries and its inhabitants hide many secrets. Neil (Philip Willingham) is The Third. His job is to solve them.