I wasn’t familiar with the name of Joko Anwar before seeing the trailer for this Netflix show. This Indonesian filmmaker has been working for over 20 years now, so there are lots of things for me to catch up on.

Each of the seven episodes starts with a minute or two of lead in to the story before moving on to the opening credit sequence. A sequence clearly inspired by Rod Serling’s original Twilight Zone. And as I watched this series I found myself thinking these feel like something Rod Serling would have done had he been Indonesian and living in this era. The Twilight Zone series was known for taking the everyday and revealing something horrific or frightening below the surface.

Sitting in my air conditioned home watching this show, surrounded by the materialistic trappings of an American life, was a bit surreal. Many of these stories show a society of squalor. People living in shanty towns, one room homes cobbled together from scraps of tin and random boards, bare walls and maybe one or two pieces of furniture. Their lives are ones of need and hope. That environment is important to understanding the scope of the stories.

I don’t want to go too deep into the individual stories and spoil them. So just a brief synopsis of them.

We start with Old House. A Taxi driver living in an apartment tenement building but struggling day to day. His aging mother lives with him and his wife and child. After a dangerous incident brought on by the mother’s forgetfulness, he decides to take her to an old folks home that offered free lodging for her. As the first episode, it sets the stage quite well, but it does lack in the special effects department.

The Orphan is the second episode and follows a couple who adopt a demon child that brings them riches, but will lead to their death after a week. The potential to leave their life of squalor behind is the only thing they are focused on.

Episode three, Poems and Pain, follows a writer who seemingly becomes possessed and experiences the injuries her main character does.

We return to the excruciatingly poor side of Jakarta to watch as a man goes from being a nobody to seeing an angel and being seen as a prophet. This is the first episode where we realize that the story doesn’t really resolve. And also we see a piece of connective tissue to a previous episode.

In Other Side we meet a man who lives on the edges of poverty. His wife and son are content in their life, but he feels like he has let them down. One night he comes across the run down theater he used to work at and finds a side door that lets him inside. While the outside appeared to be an abandoned building, inside it is in the prime of a thriving business. He is given the choice between staying or returning to his life. I loved the feel of this, much like Jack Nicholson in the bar in the Shining.

The penultimate episode of the series Hypnotized explores a man who uses hypnosis to steal money. But then his life spirals out of control in ways that make no sense, yet keep you riveted. Another episode here where the ending is such that there must be a sequel or part two. But that’s not exactly what we are going to get.

The finale has just as much Twilight Zone feels as the others did. A woman is trying to find her missing sister and the only lead she has is that she responded to a job ad to P.O. Box 888. While investigating it, she realizes the best way to figure it out is by following the path her sister did. And that leads her to a very dark place. Again, I don’t want to spoil things, but it does lead to what is effectively a sequel to each and every episode .

I would love to see a second season of this show, but the way it ended I don’t feel like it could have a directly named season two. The way it plays out makes me feel like a newly titled series would be the follow up. Or a movie.