Baby Reindeer hits hard. The experience of Richard Gadd‘s Netflix series is about pain, and it never sugarcoats it. The show is, as cinematographer Krzysztof Trojnar puts it, like being lost in a dark hole.
In creating that hole, Trojnar referenced David Fincher‘s adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk‘s “Fight Club.”
The darkness, the sweat, and the oppressive city, those are certainly links between Baby Reindeer and Fight Club. “I’m drawn to films that have a POV narrative,” Trojnar told Immersive Media’s Eric Green. “One of the films came up, maybe not exactly tonally, but there was something about Fight Club that I loved in this kind of gritty world. It’s completely different but it’s an amazing film. I thought that the world of Baby Reindeer needs to be gritty, and there’s nothing pretty about it.”
Even the comedy is bleak in Baby Reindeer. When Gadd hits the stage, he’s in a piercing darkness. The uneasy grit is impossible to escape for both Gatt and the audience.
Baby Reindeer is now available on Netflix.
