The Killing - The Complete Fourth Season

After two cancelations and a collaboration between AMC and Netflix to keep the series afloat, TV series "The Killing" has come to a close after its fourth and final season. This dark police procedural drama, the US remake of the Danish television series "Forbrydelsen" ("The Crime") has been compared to David Lynch's "Twin Peaks," though it is more inclined to naturalistic narrative.

Detectives Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) and Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) simply cannot escape their past, especially now that Linden has killed her former lover and the head of Special Investigations James Skinner. Holder tries to help her cover up the murder, but she isn't making it easy, doing foolish things like holding onto the shell casings of the bullets she used to shoot her victim. And Holder has issues of his own: His girlfriend has announced that she is pregnant, and he has decided to marry her.

Meanwhile, the partners have a case to solve. They are investigating the brutal murder of the Stansbury family and all signs point to the surviving son Kyle, a member of an all-boys military academy. Though the boy is released into the custody of the Academy, the detectives have a difficult time interviewing him due to the watchful control of the school's militant leader Margaret Rayne (Oscar Nominee,Joan Allen).

Though Linden seems to be getting away with her crime, police detective Carl Reddick (Gregg Henry) has his suspicions, and he is conducting a private investigation of his own that may lead to Linden's downfall.

The sunless skies of Seattle have never looked bleaker than in the dark and muted videography of this series. On top of the drab color palate, unnatural dialogue and bizarrely expressionistic points of view within the photography keep the viewer confused and, when it's working well, wanting more.

When it comes to the production of this DVD, the distributors seem to have given up, expecting audiences to watch the show on-demand. The 2-DVD set is completely rudimentary with no special features or even any subtitles. The encoding as well is what you would expect to see on-demand with colors crushed together and compressed-looking blocking patterns.

"The Killing: The Complete Fourth Season"
DVD
Not Rated | 346 minutes
www.amctv.com/shows/the-killing