TV Review: ‘Moon Knight’ Is Stronger On Ghoulish Atmosphere Than Superhero Excitement
Oscar Isaac acts his asp off as Marvel's "Moon Knight," yet the action-challenged series still sputters.
Making his heralded MCU debut with his own self-titled Disney+ series, Marvel’s Moon Knight (★★★☆☆) is a hero who literally doesn’t know himself. Beneath his mask of bandages and ceremonial armor, he’s a man split in two, beset by inner demons as well as the mystical demons and deities that dog his path.
Most days, as we’re led to believe from episode one, he wakes up in London as mild-mannered museum gift shop clerk Steven Grant. Prone to sleep-walking and unexplained blackouts, Steven only vaguely begins to realize he perhaps lives a whole other life as adventurer — and maybe mercenary — Marc Spector. In turn, Spector leads another life himself, as the supernaturally empowered protector of the vulnerable, Moon Knight.
Appearing to each other in reflections, Steven and Marc bicker among themselves, two separate characters both embodied by the formidable Oscar Isaac, living up to his billing as the show’s main attraction.
As the series develops an intriguingly spooky mystery around Steven/Marc’s split personality, Isaac delivers grounded psychological distress alongside monster movie terror, with moments of screwball comedy thrown in for a few laughs.
The actor’s British accent as mousy Steven sounds iffy, but iffy might actually work for a character who at times is uncertain whether he is the person he thinks he is.
For the audience’s sake, Isaac does enough to distinguish the two that we can discern Marc from Steven based on facial expressions alone. Even as he emotes opposite Steven’s living statue bestie, CGI-enhanced Egyptian gods, and an appealingly eclectic international cast, Isaac’s acting opposite himself is what sustains the series.
Stronger on ghoulish atmosphere than superhero excitement, the show doesn’t establish a confident, stirring action style, at least not in the four episodes available for review. There are standoffs shot and staged so unsurely, particularly in the two episodes directed by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, that they drag down the scenes that generate real buoyancy and impact.
On occasion, the dialogue drags enough on its own, as in an exchange between Ethan Hawke’s deadly cult leader Arthur Harrow and black-market antiquities dealer Anton Mogart, played by Gaspard Ulliel, who, unfortunately, passed away earlier this year after a skiing accident.
Teasing a dramatic reveal, Harrow asks, “Anton, would you like to see for yourself?” “I do,” comes the response. “I do” what? Not horrible, but certainly clunky, the writing definitely does no favors for Marc/Steven’s love interest, Layla El-Faouly (May Calamawy).
Written as being too dense at first to consider that the man she knows as Marc Spector isn’t faking his new-to-her Steven Grant identity, Layla takes more time than she should to get up to speed. And Calamawy’s flat performance can’t disguise the unconvincing conception of her character, an apparent stand-in for the hero’s longtime love in the comics, Marlene Alraune.
Layla’s main appeal is in her courage to leap into danger to save her man, or do what’s right. Of course, danger follows wherever she and Marc/Steven/Moon Knight may go, from the streets and galleries of London to ancient tombs of pharaohs.
A handful of Moon Knight‘s hand-to-hand battles really thrill — usually in episodes directed by Mohamed Diab — just as a few of the chases bounce along propelled by sharp editing or comedic charm, while others simply stumble.
The one mode where the series is consistently successful is in its suspenseful, macabre depiction of Moon Knight’s backstory, and present-day struggles, as a pawn in a war between Egyptian deities.
Marc, and thus Steven, is bound by a pact to serve the Egyptian moon god Khonshu (balefully voiced by F. Murray Abraham), dispensing justice on behalf of those who are wronged. Meanwhile, Hawke’s eerily calm cultist Harrow leads followers of goddess Ammit, determined to impose her justice on wrongdoers before they commit their crimes.
Between Harrow’s mind games, and the frightening presence of Khonshu dancing around his disoriented brain, Steven is under constant threat, even in moments when he’s alone — because he’s never alone. Not only an avatar for an exiled god, Steven/Marc is portrayed with sensitivity as an avatar for a mental condition that makes Moon Knight uniquely vulnerable and powerful at the same time.
Moon Knight is available for streaming weekly on DisneyPlus. Visit www.disneyplus.com.
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