‘True Detective: Night Country’ Review: Iced In

“True Detective” was never a series that went in for tender moments, but “True Detective: Night Country” — the show’s fourth season, after a five-year hiatus — takes a particularly unforgiving approach to the human condition. There is a moment late in the six-episide season, however, when the dour pop soundtrack turns sentimental and it’s clear that we are supposed to be tenderly moved by what is happening. What is happening is that someone is disposing of the dismembered body of the close family member they have just killed.

Created for HBO back in 2014 by the writer and English professor Nic Pizzolatto, the original iteration of “True Detective” was a gothic crime drama, in anthology form, marked by Pizzolatto’s penchant for ostensibly profound, quasi-poetic dialogue — Raymond Chandler by way of Rod McKuen.

The new season, directed and largely written by the Mexican filmmaker Issa López (it premieres on Sunday), dispenses with the poetry — it is by and large a plain-spoken affair. But where Pizzolatto’s “True Detective” stories were essentially traditional noirs with a gloss of pop psychology and horror-movie sensationalism, López commits fully to the outré and the supernatural. Parricide? That’s just coming up for air.

López is coy about whether the cops, scientists, mine workers and Indigenous Alaskans who populate her story are actually dealing with malevolent spirits, but she is profligate in her use of horror effects to jolt the audience and goose the plot. Unseen voices abound, and dead people are frequently seen. Polar bears loom in the darkness. Oranges mysteriously, repeatedly appear out of nowhere and roll under characters’ feet. A group of men freeze together in a big jumble, naked and mid-scream, and have to be cut out of the ice and slowly thawed under bright lights. (Somewhere, “The Thing” is wondering why it didn’t think of that.)