Summary
Triptych has some scant pleasures in its premise and fairly solid thriller construction, but it succumbs to melodrama and an unsatisfying climax after a while.
The Mexican Netflix thriller Triptych is, apparently, based on a true story, though nobody seems entirely sure which one. The closest analog seems to be the story of three triplets who were separated at birth and later reunited, a case most notably documented in Three Identical Strangers, but this isn’t a documentary.
It uses the allure of a distinctly weird premise with a compelling grain of truth to it as the basis for a fairly decent, if pretty standard, eight-part thriller.
Triptych Season 1 Review and Plot Summary
That premise is as follows: Rebecca, a forensics expert with the Mexico City police, stumbles onto a disturbing crime scene. That might seem pretty par for the course in her line of work, but not when the victim has a scary resemblance to herself.
Since the show’s title – the original non-English title is Triada – refers to things being in triplicate, it isn’t exactly difficult to figure out where this is going, which isn’t helped by a rote presentation.
You’ve seen it all before. After the setup, we move into a procedural investigation in which new information is learned, red herrings are followed, and things get a little weird.
Whatever was true about the story in the first place becomes a little lost in the genre conventions, with Triptych resembling something like Orphan Black more than anything else.
The production is fine. The acting is decent, most of the time, and the execution is solid, even if there’s a slight tendency to lose focus on the core issue in favor of telenovela-style melodramatics, and the real-life basis is used quite cynically, and not really to any lasting effect.
Most of the story’s weight is shouldered by Maite Perroni (Who Killed Sara?), and it’s a capable leading performance with a lot of required versatility.
Is Triptych on Netflix worth watching?
But it’s quite a singular highlight. Perroni is surrounded by less interesting characters and more amateurish performances, with the aforementioned melodramatics threatening to overwhelm the material as things progress.
This, like all thrillers, works on the basis of posing a question and not giving the audience an answer to it straight away, and that should, for most, be enough to keep them invested until the end (episodes run around 45 minutes, mostly, so it isn’t the heaviest binge.) However, whether they’ll get a return on that investment remains to be seen, since the ending might not be considered overly satisfactory, and the plot loses itself on the way there.
What did you think of Triptych Season 1? Comment below.
More Articles on Triptych
