As far as I can tell, the new Apple TV+ series The Changeling is not meant to have any direct connection to either the 1980 haunted house movie of the same title starring George C. Scott or to Clint Eastwood’s 2008 kidnapped-child drama called Changeling starring Angelina Jolie. I say “as far as I can tell” because honestly, based on the three episodes available so far, I’m not entirely sure what this show is or where it’s going. This one’s a bit of a puzzle.

Officially, the show is based on a 2017 novel by author Victor LaValle, but the story has elements involving both a missing child and the supernatural. It wouldn’t surprise me if LaValle deliberately chose the title for its similarity to one or both of those previous works. Or maybe I’m imagining that and this will go in a completely different direction. It’s hard to know just yet – an aspect that leaves me intrigued but also more than a little frustrated.

Title:	The Changeling
Season:	1
Episodes:	1.01 – First Comes Love 1.02 – Then Comes Baby in a Baby Carriage 1.03 – *
Release Date:	Sept. 8, 2023
Watched On:	Apple TV+

LaKeith Stanfield from Sorry to Bother You and Judas and the Black Messiah both stars in the series and serves as an Executive Producer. With a setting mostly in the year 2010, his character Apollo Kagwa is a rare book collector and seller who meets the love of his life, Emma (Clark Backo), at a library. Though she resists his charms at first, he eventually wins her over. They date, marry, and have a child. Then his world falls apart after something horrific happens.

That’s the short and simple version of the story, but little about this show is either short or simple. This story is interspersed with flashbacks to multiple time periods (primarily 1968 and 1977, but others as well) to show us how Apollo’s parents (Alexis Louder and Jared Abrahamson) likewise met, fell in love, married, and suffered some sort of tragedy as yet undefined. How exactly the story in the past relates to or affects the story in 2010 is not clear. Meanwhile, Apollo is plagued by recurring nightmares about being snatched as a child by a monster – an event that may nor may not have really happened.

After having the baby, Emma’s behavior grows increasingly erratic and troubled. She can’t bond with her son, insists that a mysterious stalker keeps texting her photos that promptly vanish before she can show them to anyone, and even comes to believe she was cursed by a witch while visiting Brazil years earlier. Apollo thinks she’s depressed and paranoid, and Emma finds his dismissive attitude infuriating. Their relationship becomes strained until it hits a terrible breaking point.

That’s where things leave off after the three-episode premiere. Of what’s available so far, much of the story is compelling, the two leads have great chemistry, and the show paints a very convincing (and harrowing) portrait of postpartum depression. On the other hand, I can’t help feeling that the series is far too pretentious with its countless flashbacks and flashforwards and flashbacks-within-flashbacks-within-flashforwards-within-flashbacks, confusingly spread across a dozen different time periods. Frequent voiceover narration delivered by author LaValle himself is superfluous and annoying, and the many surreal elements feel dragged out far too long without explanation.

Honestly, even after three episodes, I’m not even sure I know what this show’s about at all. When I read the one-sentence plot description blurb on IMDb, I’m baffled at how it doesn’t seem to describe anything that’s actually happened in the series yet. I can appreciate a slow burn, but this one may be simmering far too slowly. A TV series like this can’t afford to take four or more episodes before even bothering to explain what the basic premise of the story is.

I’m invested enough in the characters that I’ll give the show a little more time to straighten some of these issues out, but it will need to start pulling together soon or I fear I may lose interest.

Video Streaming

The Changeling is a highly stylized TV series, but the chosen style is not really conducive to home theater eye candy. Although Apple TV+ streams the show in 4K HDR, most viewers will probably be hard-pressed to tell that from the results. The photography is only moderately sharp most of the time. Much of it is also dimly-lit and employs heavy color filters (especially a dingy yellow) that leave the palette rather muted. The 2.40:1 image has no sense of HDR at all. Black levels are elevated and highlights are dulled. That’s not to say it looks bad, just that the creators are going for a specific mood and effect that are not necessarily meant to look pretty.

A couple scenes set in Brazil have Portuguese-language dialogue with subtitles that, at least on my device, are positioned one line in the picture and one in the lower letterbox bar. That will make them difficult to read for those few viewers like myself watching on Constant Image Height projection screens.

Annoyingly, the Apple TV+ app on my NVIDIA Shield streaming device is limited to only 2.0 audio, which forced me to switch to my backup Roku instead. The show’s Dolby Atmos soundtrack is quiet and understated on the whole, with selected moments that build up in power. The opening theme music introduced with the second episode is surprisingly loud. Fidelity is very good, especially for the many licensed songs, some of which are mixed to expand to the height speakers.