As a fan of puzzles and dark productions I couldn't resist this episode. A lethal screenshot and its story about a booby trapped penthouse really intrigued me. In fact it instantly reminded me of the film Cube by Vincenzo Natali. Of course I didn't expected it to be as fascinating and as I had never seen CSI: NY before I really didn't know if Death House's 43 minutes would worth it. Now that I have seen it I strongly recommend it. I played some titles from the Myst video game series and all the mind games the characters had to solve felt like watching them playing. At first I was a bit skeptical because it looked like an other episodic cop show but the minutes passed and I quickly understood CSI: NY was special.
First Gary Sinise plays Mac Taylor, the male protagonist, and as expected his acting was good and his character interesting. In fact like many people I only remembered him as Lieutenant Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump so in some way he also convinced me to watch the episode. However I couldn't relate to the other characters as I had never seen the performers before. His female partner was supportive, contributed to make the action scarier and even said something quite funny about "ladies first". So they worked well together even if I wasn't thrilled by them. But it's probably because I knew nothing about them. As for the others I found the "geek chicken" quite annoying, worst he reminded of Topher from Dollhouse. But in general many team members helped so in the end all their skills served the mission.
Beside the protagonists I also enjoyed the creativity. I'm familiar with game design and found some traps quite original. It's definitely an episode you'll want to watch again. The other surprising element was the wise use of high-end technology to solve the case. It wasn't just to woo us and most items served a purpose : 3D scanner to identify a victim from its head, mobile phones to capture a room and compare it to a painting As for the story it was quite intriguing, very surprising and the scenes dynamic was well balanced. At some point I even wanted it to never end, hoping they would find an other clue or mystery. Moreover the penthouse was well designed and it felt like the story could loop and reinvent itself every time, like in the film Groundhog Day for example. The puzzling writing even reminded me of the novels trilogy Les Fourmis (The Ants) by Bernard Werber. Last but not least the action got really intense when the story reached its climax. So even if it wasn't as frightening and twisted as I hoped it would be, it should be enough to appeal most viewers, even the most expectative ones.
To sum things up, watch it or die hard. Because one day you might just end up like the century-old corpse they found at the beginning, naively following a psycho-Penthouse Pet in her lair, and wished you had followed this very advice.
First Gary Sinise plays Mac Taylor, the male protagonist, and as expected his acting was good and his character interesting. In fact like many people I only remembered him as Lieutenant Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump so in some way he also convinced me to watch the episode. However I couldn't relate to the other characters as I had never seen the performers before. His female partner was supportive, contributed to make the action scarier and even said something quite funny about "ladies first". So they worked well together even if I wasn't thrilled by them. But it's probably because I knew nothing about them. As for the others I found the "geek chicken" quite annoying, worst he reminded of Topher from Dollhouse. But in general many team members helped so in the end all their skills served the mission.
Beside the protagonists I also enjoyed the creativity. I'm familiar with game design and found some traps quite original. It's definitely an episode you'll want to watch again. The other surprising element was the wise use of high-end technology to solve the case. It wasn't just to woo us and most items served a purpose : 3D scanner to identify a victim from its head, mobile phones to capture a room and compare it to a painting As for the story it was quite intriguing, very surprising and the scenes dynamic was well balanced. At some point I even wanted it to never end, hoping they would find an other clue or mystery. Moreover the penthouse was well designed and it felt like the story could loop and reinvent itself every time, like in the film Groundhog Day for example. The puzzling writing even reminded me of the novels trilogy Les Fourmis (The Ants) by Bernard Werber. Last but not least the action got really intense when the story reached its climax. So even if it wasn't as frightening and twisted as I hoped it would be, it should be enough to appeal most viewers, even the most expectative ones.
To sum things up, watch it or die hard. Because one day you might just end up like the century-old corpse they found at the beginning, naively following a psycho-Penthouse Pet in her lair, and wished you had followed this very advice.
