‘Black Rabbit’ (2025) Netflix Series Review - A Whole Lot of Nothing

There is something innately smarmy and slimy about Jude Law — he can use his sincerity as a front for great deception. Law is a clever, convincing manipulator; he's perfect for the acting profession. As Jake Friedken, the owner of the titular restaurant, Law unleashes his oily, mostly self-obsessed avatar so naturally that he doesn't seem to be performing at all. This 52-year-old actor is the only good reason to sit through the eight utterly exhausting and dull hours of Black Rabbit, the new Netflix crime thriller. Law slips into the dreams and the obsessions of Jake so thoroughly that his eyes appear hungry for fame and success. When Jake delivers one of those lines about the sacrifices he made to reach the top, you nod in agreement because you can sense the fire in his voice — the kind that comes from hard work. I suppose the appropriate word to describe Law's performance in Black Rabbit would be "nocturnal." Jake is always hustling; he's always on the go. Here's an ambitious man with an empty stomach. He wants money, good reviews, and a steady stream of people coming into his restaurant.
 

These plans take a hit when Vince (Jason Bateman), Jake's brother, enters the picture. With long hair and a long beard, Vince's face feels... crowded, as if those thin strands are hiding dark secrets. Well, there are secrets, all right, though they aren't too dark. But should they even be called secrets, considering the information—an incident from Jake and Vince's childhood—is merely hidden from us, not from the characters themselves? But coming back to that earlier point, how does Vince act as an obstacle in the way of Jake's ambitions? Blame his tendency to wind up in the wrong situations. In the past, his drug addiction proved to be a significant hurdle. In the present, he owes money to Junior (Forrest Weber), a member of an organized crime syndicate run by Joe Mancuso (Troy Kotsur). Junior and Babbitt (Chris Coy) threaten Vince (and later Jake), demanding $140,000. Failure to pay would lead to both personal and professional consequences: Jake's family and Vince's daughter would suffer fatal injuries, and Joe would take ownership of Jake's restaurant. But it's not as if Jake is allergic to trouble. He chases popularity and prominence with such single-minded fervor that he neglects important matters, like maintaining a safe workplace environment. This carelessness leads to further issues that put at risk his career.

The most urgent question Black Rabbit leads you to ask is this: Did it really need eight episodes, eight hours? The answer is pretty simple: No. Creators Zach Baylin and Kate Susman have little to convey through this show besides their fondness for dark comedies and crime thrillers, which, anyway, don't burst forth with intensity or passion. In one episode, Vince encounters coin thieves and runs his car over one of them twice. When Vince enters a shop to purchase a new phone, he finds a woman bickering with the shopkeeper (she could be the shopkeeper's wife or girlfriend). In another scene, Vince and Jake part ways in their underwear, and all the chase sequences contain traces of humor. Yet, the comedy in these scenes is almost non-existent, thanks to a thudding literal-mindedness that merely records these moments instead of truly seeing them or filling them with the necessary emotions. And what about those bleak, muted images? Do they accentuate how dark and depressing this world is, as well as the characters' situation? I only wish the people on screen had switched on as many lights as possible.

But what's worse is that Black Rabbit unnecessarily gives oxygen to various storylines that ultimately aren't fleshed out. Roxie (Amaka Okafor) tries to replace Jake by kicking him out, Jake starts an affair with his best friend's girlfriend (Cleopatra Coleman), and Babbitt almost begins dating Gen (Odessa Young), Vince's daughter, as "insurance." However, these incidents don't lead anywhere exciting. There is no payoff; they merely hang like empty decorations. Black Rabbit includes them just to kill time — to fill eight long hours. Its real interest lies in the gangster stuff (the menacing warnings, the chases), which, alas, gets crushed under the weight of unremarkable, undeveloped drama. The show is so tedious that you wonder whether the "B" in Black Rabbit stands for "Boring" or "Bland." Yes, my brain took a nice long nap while my eyes struggled to stay open. When the series finally ended, a voice inside me woke up and whispered, "Well, this was a whole lot of nothing. What a waste of Internet data."

Final Score- [3.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times