On Netflix, Idris Elba’s cop show Luther gets an intense update

Luther: The Fallen Sun It’s a great way to finish a BBC series. The show, centering on antihero John Luther (Idris Elba), has featured many unhinged villains over its five seasons, including dice-rolling Dungeons & Dragons fans, killer heart surgeons, and Satanic blood-drinkers. Netflix’s feature-length continuation pushes even further. Luther is a policeman who’s so violent, the only way to justify his vigilante actions is to put him up against the most heinous and outlandish crimes imaginable. Andy Serkis plays Luther as a cyber-savvy criminal. He’s a nearly omnipotent internet villain, bombastic and as oversized as the movie’s Netflix budget likely was. This is the most deranged dip into Luther’s world yet.

Jamie Payne directs and Neil Cross writes the series. Fallen SunIt begins with an example of nightmare-inducing set up. LutherThis is a huge hit. Calum is a young man who gets a threatening call from someone else. He’s blackmailed into driving to an unknown location. But he’s waylaid by something horrific in a sequence that’ll immediately join the annals of Luther’s best scares. The story’s start is a dark one. This leads to a conflict between Luther (Serkis) and David Robey (Serkis). But while the man behind the killings is terrifying — and extremely theatrical, with Serkis bringing him to life via some powerfully bad wigs — the real goal is to make viewers scared of the way he uses the internet to find and target his victims.

Photo by John Wilson/Netflix

The central premise — an extremely online killer who manipulates people by threatening to expose their secrets — taps into some familiar human fears about exposure and public shaming. This setup has been seen before by Netflix viewers. Black Mirror episode “Shut Up and Dance,” whichFallen Sun Feels heavily indebted. However, in the one Fallen Sun’s smartest twists — and biggest departures from that Black Mirror entry — the specific details of Robey’s blackmail info on his victims rarely get revealed, leaving those secrets up to the audience’s imagination. It’s a choice that works on multiple levels: We’re left to think the worst, or in more tragic circumstances, decide the victim’s shame was misplaced, making it even easier to exploit.

John Luther is the person who empathizes with these poor, lost souls and feels this most. Idris Elba, the role that earned him the Emmy nominations for four Golden Globes, is back as the titular cop. There’s an almost Columbo-like nature to the way he sniffs out the evil of the rich and privileged, and his rumpled coat is surely a nod to Peter Falk’s iconic detective. Elba in his human form is the utterly repressed hurricane that Falk portrays as an understated genius. Luther is haunted by the violence he’s seen, and the violence it’s inspired in him. It’s a heady mix. Elba’s gruffly charming London accent is unmistakable, as well his near constant fury.

Luther is like many TV detectives. He has many burners and a flipphone. He doesn’t have a social media presence. That puts him on the outside of this case looking in, as the only person in the investigation who can see what others can’t: that the internet and smart-home devices let the killer spy on and control his victims.

Photo by John Wilson/Netflix

Robey’s hunt is Luther-style fodder. But he also symbolizes Fallen Sun’s biggest digression from the series’ formula. While previous Luther villains were more grounded and operated on smaller scales than the gangland bosses and lone-wolf killers, Netflix’s budget and movie frame push the film to new heights. Robey isn’t just a wealthy and powerful killer; he’s eventually revealed as the mastermind behind a global operation, bringing one of the original internet urban legends to life.

Red Rooms are an alleged illegal site where internet viewers can make payments to view real rapes, torture, or murder. The Red Room legend has been a popular subject of filmmaking for many decades. Fallen Sun feel like a throwback to ’00s horror like My Little Eye, FeardotCom, Cry_Wolf, And Untraceable. It’s an interesting contradiction: The more intimate aspects of Robey’s plan, built around using people’s darkest online secrets to humiliate them, feels viscerally contemporary and real. Robey’s underground torture room filled with video cameras and intended to satisfy creepy men online, feels like it is a remnant internet fearmongering.

Enjoy any one of these Luther, you have to understand that it’s a fantasy on multiple levels. The image of a police vigilante fighting the bad parts of an institution to capture killers and protect vulnerable people is what it depicts. But he’s also constantly demolishing civilians’ civil liberties. That’s why deeply vile, uncompromising villains like Robey are key. Justifying Luther’s behavior means focusing on the most abhorrent crimes possible, which ultimately makes LutherFeels more like an episode of a horror film than a cop procedural.

Fallen SunThis takes the dynamic to the next level by making its antagonist a sadistic murderer, but an untouchable billionaire, complete with an army, and an underground Norwegian lair in Bond-movie style. Fallen SunIt reflects the surreal, always-surreal nature Luther and its imaginary world of good and evil, but the expanded world, short-form story, and hyper-exaggerated villainy does lessen the impact of Luther’s moral quest to stop Robey.

Photo: John Wilson/Netflix

There are many of Luther’s power comes from Elba’s ruffled cop and his conflicted heart. John is not a good guy and does horrible things, but he will do them because he feels they are right. Thanks to the long-form nature of the original TV series, there’s time for him to make connections and friendships, alliances and enemies. Fallen SunHe doesn’t have the time or energy for all of this. There’s no misguided young person for him to protect, no new partner to annoy, cajole, and ultimately bond with and save. While Elba is still the beating heart of the story, he’s laser-focused on Robey and his ever-escalating crimes. Luther is rarely conflicted by the extreme violence John faces. Here, he seems like more of a righteous and two-dimensional antihero than the complex vigilante that he was in the first series.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Luther’s original, terrific five seasons still exist. It’s easy to revisit them for depth, character development, and overarching arcs filled with morally complex quandaries. In contrast, Fallen Sun is here to offer up giant set-piece killings, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the horror-TV heyday of Hannibal. It’s for everyone who wants to watch a rarely better Idris Elba on a two-hour-plus rampage through London, demolishing anything that gets in his way. And it’s a playground for a delightfully demented performance from Serkis, who chews scenery just as consistently as his character inventively kills innocent people just to toy with Luther. Fallen Sun This is an edited, balls-to the-wall version of Luther that viewers love. It also includes some internet horror-fuel and sadism.

Luther: The Fallen SunNetflix now has it streaming.