‘Swarm’ Review: Amazon Prime Video, Donald Glover, Dominique Fishback

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TV lost a true visionary when Donald Glover’s Atlanta ended an amazing four-season run on FX last year. Lucky for us, he’s not done making great television just yet, and Atlanta fans will be in for a treat with his new horror thriller Swarm, premiering this Friday on Prime Video. (I’ve seen all seven episodes.) Brutally violent and darkly funny, Swarm is a stunning statement on the perils of extreme fandom, anchored by a masterful and haunting lead performance from Dominique Fishback set to be one of the best of the year. .

Fishback (The Deuce) plays Dre, a devoted super fan of a Beyoncé-like pop idol named Ni’Jah, whose fanatical followers are known as The Swarm. (As one character puts it: “Talk about Ni’Jah, you get pricked.”) Dre and his sister Marissa (Chloe Bailey) used to be big Ni’Jah fans together, but now Marissa has grown up and moved on, while Dre is still stuck in teenybopper mode, obsessing over Ni’Jah’s every move. When tragedy strikes, it sends Dre into a very dark place… and launches him on a vicious cross-country killing spree, exacting revenge on anyone who dares question Ni’Jah’s supremacy.

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Glover (credited as co-creator and executive producer) is reteaming with Atlanta writer Janine Nabers, who serves as showrunner here, and they bring Atlanta’s unsurprisingly surreal tone and dark humor to the story of Dr. Swarm is vividly rendered and thick with atmosphere, taking place in mundane settings that accentuate the violence. It also puts us in a tempting moral position: Dre is funny and even sympathetic at times… but then he closes his eyes and sees red, with a disturbing buzzing sound in his ears. (She asks her victims, “Who’s your favorite actress?” and anyone who doesn’t say Ni’Jah soon regrets that decision.) We’re not exactly rooting for her, but she’s undeniably is very attractive.

Bailey and Snowfall star Damson Idris do good work here in small roles, but this is Fishback’s show all the way, and he gets away with it. Dre is an odd duck: socially awkward and utterly lacking in recognizable human emotions, but also almost childish. (When he hears a Ni’Jah song playing, he feels possessed.) Fishback skillfully transitions from Dre’s public discomfort, with shaky legs and sudden eye darts, to his secret lust for blood with remarkable ease. Towards the end, Dre transforms completely, taking Fishback’s brilliant performance to incredible new heights. If there is any justice in this world, his name will be remembered come Emmy time.

The Swarm becomes episodic as Dre crosses the country, with a friendly group of strippers and then an NVIXM-like “female empowerment group,” with a stealth appearance from a real-life pop superstar that makes it very meta. This is repeating itself a bit — another recent example of a limited series that was probably just one movie. (A turn to true-crime parody, while fun, only serves to dull the main momentum of the story.) But Fishback’s performance never gets stale, and even Glover and Nabers’ story takes some quite wild turns at the finish, it was one hell of a ride I will never forget.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Donald Glover proves he can do horror too with Swarm, anchored by a dazzling lead performance from Dominique Fishback.

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