Lee Toland Krieger gives actors room and knows how to establish a television series. We rate his care with character and tone, though You sometimes rushes past the disturbing questions that make it worth watching.
Fi1m perspective
Penn Badgley’s voice-over in You (2018) turns courtship into surveillance. We were unsettled by how readily the narration lets us follow a stalker’s thinking; Badgley keeps the thriller entertaining while making that entertainment uncomfortable. Lee Toland Krieger directed the pilot and early episodes, helping establish a series that gets much of its effect from that awkwardness. It is a useful introduction to a director we rate for his work with actors and his handling of tone.
Before the television work, he wrote and directed The Vicious Kind (2009), a contained character piece that depended on the performances. Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012) continued his interest in relationships and heartbreak, with comedy and drama needing to coexist without cancelling each other out. His economical, deliberate camerawork leaves space for actors, a useful discipline when small changes of feeling matter more than constant movement. His move into major studio features came with the romantic drama The Age of Adaline (2015).
The shift towards television began in 2014 and has frequently involved pilots and establishing a programme’s visual approach. That makes You and the pilot of Superman & Lois (2021) representative assignments. His collaborators include producer Greg Berlanti and writer-producer Sera Gamble, and we would not credit a director with everything a series does. Establishing how a programme looks and giving its actors room to work is nevertheless a substantial job, even when others will take over.
The limitation is clear in You: the social satire is blunt, and the plotting sometimes hurries past the questions worth asking. A confident opening cannot guarantee that a series will keep examining the behaviour it makes so watchable. That reservation does not undo the pleasure of Badgley’s performance, though it keeps our enthusiasm in proportion. Start with You if an uncomfortable stalker thriller appeals; allow for less patience in the storytelling than we would like.
Biography
Lee Toland Krieger is an American film director and screenwriter. Born on 24 January 1983 in Los Angeles, he graduated from the University of Southern California's School of Cinema and Television in 2005.
Krieger's feature directorial debut was The Vicious Kind (2009), which he also wrote and produced. He went on to direct Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012) and The Age of Adaline (2015). He has directed episodes of several television series, including the pilot and other instalments of You (2018).
