A novelist makes a shocking discovery about where the inspiration for her new book is coming from.

The first half of Poems and Pain, the third of Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams anthology series, is an absorbing and intriguing ride. Rania (Marissa Anita) is reluctantly embarking on a follow-up to her best seller – a novel detailing a horribly abusive marital relationship. We learn that while writing the original a few years earlier, she would descend into a fugue state, then coming to, only to discover that she had typed thirty pages of graphic violence against her central character. Alarmingly, not only did she have no memory of writing anything, but she bore the exact same injuries incurred by her fictional protagonist.

Rania is reluctant to repeat the process, but she is running dangerously low on funds and the bank is refusing to renew her mortgage. However, this time the violence she awakes to find written on her laptop is far worse, as are the injuries she is suffering while seemingly unconscious and alone.

It’s a great premise for a mystery, and I suspect any viewer, just like me, will find themselves busily trying to guess the outcome. Unfortunately, while the episode does hold the attention right to the end, the explanation is frustratingly schematic, feeling like something of a narrative cheat… on top of which, in the final act, the story makes a screeching handbrake turn in order to fit into the series arc supposedly tying the discrete stories together. I found this frustrating and given the seriousness of the topic (be warned – the domestic violence shown makes for a disturbing watch) this needed to be a story that worked in its own right. The final twist diminishes what could have been by far the best and most important episode of the series so far.

Verdict: Poems and Pain is well worth forty-five minutes of your time, but I did squirm slightly at the use of domestic violence as a means to a narrative end. I’m still in there though, and really interested to see how the series plays out. 7/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com