I keep a sharp eye on Netflix’s new arrivals, always looking for something new. The latest series to catch my attention was Jinn. This is Netflix’s first Arabic series and was filmed in Jordan. The premise seemed interesting, even if not overly unique, and I’m always interested in learning about other cultures so I gave it a try. Despite the poor dubbing I’m glad I did.
PLOT
For the most part, the plot is straight forward. Aside from the setting there really isn’t much which makes it stand out from other teen supernatural series. It gets a bit confusing at the end, but really there are no surprises. For a school trip students travel to the city of Petra. After sneaking off to party and drink one student dies. This leads to the main character meeting a Jinn who warns her the people she cares about are in danger and that she needs to help him stop another Jinn. I had hoped there would be more mystery involved, but the other Jinn was blatantly obvious and they directly told us who it was in episode two. There was a surprise later on, and there is a certain amount of ambiguity, but nothing which seems out of place. The season ends on a cliffhanger, and it hinted at a bigger picture, so I look forward to seeing what happens next season.
SETTING
One of the main reasons I watched was to see the culture and locations. Life in Jordan doesn’t seem to be that different than life here in the US. There were groups of more religious people, but the series followed typical High School students with typical High School problems. While the Jinn mythology and powers were specific to the region, it really could have been swapped out with any culture’s monsters. That being said, I enjoyed learning about the Jinn and LOVED seeing the scenery. Petra was amazing and there were other interesting locales as well.
The one cultural thing which stood out to me was the treatment of women. We definitely saw the stereotypical men being possessive and controlling of woman. The series seemed to make a point of refuting that though. When one character was particularly living up to the role, the girl told him to F* Off. We also have out main female characters exhibiting just as much freedom as the males. To top it off, one of the Jinn was a strong female character. The season showed that woman’s place in Arabic society is not as bad as stereotypes lead us to believe.
LENGTH
The season is five episodes long. The first episode was 45 minutes and the rest were half an hour each giving a total run time of about 2 hours, 45 minutes. The series ended on a cliffhanger, so it is safe to assume we will have another 3 hours eventually. This would have been well suited for a two hour movie, but depending on where the story goes it could easily last several seasons.
SUBS vs DUBs
I watched with both subbing and dubbing on. As expected for an international series, the subs and dubs disagreed with each other. The dubs were pretty poor as well. I would suggest listening to the original audio and reading the subs if you are going to watch.
Overall Jinn was a decent series. Its not particular memorable, but interesting enough to be worth watching. I look forward to season two!
Originally published at https://www.narrative.org on July 1, 2019.
