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The Creepy Cult of ‘The Third Day’ Feels Uncomfortably Familiar
Islands with inhabitants who have unorthodox religious practices get a pretty bad rap in pop culture. From The Wicker Man—the original film from 1973, not the Nic Cage version with the bees—to Netflix’s criminally underseen Apostle, good things rarely happen to outsiders, by which I mean they’re probably going to be used in some kind of arcane ritual sacrifice. (Even if the correlation between burning a virginal police officer and saving dying crops to satisfy pagan gods is, um, a little suspect.)
Naturally, then, the warning siren goes off from the very beginning of the new HBO miniseries The Third Day. A grief-stricken man named Sam (played by HBO’s former Young Pope, Jude Law) is making his way through a forested area somewhere in the United Kingdom when he saves a mysterious girl from hanging herself. After she comes to and refuses to discuss what happened, Sam drives her back to her home: an island called Osea that is accessible for only a few hours a day on a narrow causeway when the tide is low. As these tales usually go, Sam must spend the night on Osea Island after failing to leave before the ocean swallows up the road. And he soon learns more about the people, the ways they intertwine Christianity with their worship of a Celtic war god(!!), and the strange feeling that he’s somehow connected to Osea.
As far as setups go, The Third Day is familiar territory for anyone who likes their Creepy Islands with a side of Potentially Dangerous Cultists. But the show makes an effort to outline its world in detail. The history of Osea Island as told on the series—that it was purchased in the early 1900s by a social reformer who wanted the place to become a working camp for recovering alcoholics and addicts, a man who was also suspected of being Jack the Ripper—is so ominous, you’ll be astonished to find out that it’s actually true. (Google Frederick Nicholas Charrington if you’d like to know more, or visit the real Osea Island website, which makes it seem like a much more enticing place to visit.)
