Review: ‘Manifest’
Imagine this: Lost meets The Leftovers in a modern-day New York City setting-- but possibly better.
After flight 828 experiences unusually violent, brief turbulence, 191 passengers land safely home in New York. To their confusion, they are bombarded with police and media only to find out that they’ve been reported missing for five years. Their loved ones have mourned their deaths and moved on but to those aboard 828, no time has passed at all.
Jeff Rake’s Manifest stars Josh Dallas (Once Upon a Time) as Ben Stone and Melissa Roxburgh as Michaela Stone. Both fantastic actors, but not ones I’ve seen much of in Hollywood media. Roxburgh is a badass. Her character Michaela is a detective for the NYPD and has this strong, admirable grit. The writing’s not too shabby either. Although the tone is overall suspenseful, sometimes a sarcastic line or two is thrown in there for comedic relief which I can greatly appreciate.
Before the slight mishap in time, Michaela’s boyfriend Jared (J.R. Ramirez) proposed to her and she was going to tell him yes. When she returns, she finds out Jared is now married to her best friend. Ouch. Ben’s wife and daughter have also moved on and there’s a new father figure in the picture. No one really knows what to do. I mean, imagine flying home from vacation and returning to a world that’s aged five years without you.
To make things even more cuckoo bananas, there are the voices and visions- the “Callings” as the characters refer to them as. Could be a little cheesy of a plotline but hey, so far it’s working for the show. Some of these passengers get cryptic messages hinting at them to do or find something. Eventually, one of these Callings leads Michaela and Ben to find a group of passengers that went missing after the plane landed. The plot develops further into a theory that the government may have something to do with everything that’s happening to them, and not everyone on the plane is innocent.
It’s addictive, it’s thrilling and it is well worth your Sunday afternoon binge-watching.
Manifest premiered last September so the series is still relatively new. I’m on episode 11 out of 16 right now and it’s taking all my will power to be writing this when I could be watching that. I don’t think this show has received as much attention as I believe it deserves, maybe people just don’t know it exists. I’m here to tell you to go watch the first episode and give it a shot. If you like suspense and drama, you WILL love this show. But if you don’t, that’s cool too. I appreciate a show with actors I haven’t seen much of and these actors certainly don’t disappoint.
Full episodes of Manifest can be found on Hulu or nbc.com. Sneak a peek at the series trailer below.
