‘Death by Lightning’ (2025) Netflix Series Review - O President! My President!

A writer, director, or creator can shape a story any way they want. What's interesting, at least to me, is what the filmmaker adds or omits from the screen, from the pages. It tells you about the creator — their motivations, their purpose. In Death by Lightning, Mike Makowsky, the show's creator, remembers the 20th President of the United States, James A. Garfield, and mourns his loss. This sadness for a life prematurely lost comes with a derisory gaze that's cast upon the man who killed the President. He is Charles J. Guiteau, and if you go through his Wikipedia page, you will immediately declare him a first-rate loser. Makowsky, though, doesn't bother getting into each and every aspect of Guiteau's life. In Death by Lightning, for instance, Charles (Matthew Macfadyen) is not shown as a married man or as a (unsuccessful) lawyer. What Makowsky does is keep Guiteau's loser image and use it to present Charles. And even though some of the incidents in the show match the text on Wikipedia (his time at Oneida Community, his idea of starting a newspaper called The Daily Theocrat), Macfadyen's Charles is very much a good-for-nothing clown pinned on the wall like a shooting target. Makowsky hits his darts with precision, and he invites us to laugh at this scoundrel as well. 

But Makowsky's target is too easy to hate. So easy, in fact, that he elicits little reaction. Macfadyen portrays Charles as a wide-eyed idiot who adores James (Michael Shannon) like a lunatic fan. A handshake from James is all it takes for him to start building a castle in the air. A handshake is obviously a big deal for someone like Charles, who has virtually no friends. A politician greets him with a generic statement like, "Your support means the world to us," and Charles almost sheds proud, happy tears. In the background, you see an "I Support Garfield" banner, which is blurred because you can replace "Garfield" with any other name, and Charles will support that individual as long as he gets his ego massage and validation. Unsurprisingly, then, when Charles meets the reluctant President face-to-face, he stammers, mumbles, and chokes on his words, overwhelmed by his emotions. When Charles first hears James' name, he puzzlingly asks, "Who the hell is Garfield?" But when James wins and the crowd begins to chant his name, Charles becomes a devotee, only accentuating his opportunistic nature. Macfadyen's performance leaves no room for ambiguity, no room for doubt that his character is mentally unstable. He suffers from illusions of grandeur. Charles believes he has been sent on the Earth for some higher purpose. That inflated sense of self-importance costs him his one real relationship with his sister (Paula Malcomson). Charles' problem is that he is a dreamer, not a doer. Even after stealing plenty of money from her married sister's house, he doesn't invest that moolah in, say, starting The Daily Theocrat. He simply spends his days like a wealthy man — until he runs out of cash.

When experts analyzed Guiteau's body and brain, they found that he suffered from a condition known as phimosis and may have also had neurosyphilis. A man named George Paulson, though, argued that Guiteau had schizophrenia and "grandiose narcissism." Examine Macfadyen's Charles, and you will merely find a performance steeped in conventions, offering little that feels new or original. The actor, unfortunately, is constricted by the script's ambitions. Consider Dominique Fishback's performance in Swarm — she brings out Dre's obsessions with chilling effects. Macfadyen, in comparison, is only able to foreground Charles' off-putting desperation, which, very quickly, becomes stale and unremarkable. The fault, however, lies more with the filmmakers, who approach the material with a stifling narrow-mindedness. All they want to say is this: James is good, Charles is bad. The entire show merely proves the validity of this slogan. James, in fact, is depicted with such goodness that you can almost see Makowsky elevating him to sainthood. Shannon's performance, meanwhile, validates Makowsky's sentiments. In Shannon's hands, James always looks in pain, as if he's paying a hefty price for the sins of mankind. He is suffering because he is fighting within a system that's rigged and corrupted by the likes of Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham). This fight, however, feels painless because James' victory over Roscoe and his vice-president, Chester A. Arthur (Nick Offerman), plays out in scenes that read more like "this happened, then this happened."

For Makowsky, the purpose of creating Death by Lightning is to pay his tributes to a president who could have probably taken America to great heights. Couldn't the filmmakers have expressed their admiration through their filmmaking as well? In this realm of fiction, couldn't they have infused James with more vigor, more zest for politics and life? Or these qualities could have been instilled in the style of filmmaking, in the images on the screen. The James A. Garfield of Death by Lightning is too square, too sober, to inspire any confidence in the public (the show, similarly, is bland and uninspiring). There is no trace of enthusiasm in his rousing speech; there is no hypnotic charm in his mannerisms or eyes. How anyone could be moved by this version of Garfield is beyond my understanding. He even talks slowly, gently, calmly, like someone who knows precisely how much time he has left to live. Lucretia Garfield (Betty Gilpin), too, talks like a seer when she meets Charles in prison. When she curses him, saying he will be removed from the pages of history, and adds that her husband would become a question for trivia night, you feel as if the words are coming from the writers—the script. This Lucretia has travelled to the future and has seen firsthand the fate of both the killer and the victim. But with Death by Lightning, Makowsky somewhat reverses Lucretia's curse. After this show, Charles' name will reach more and more ears. Lucretia won't be pleased by this show's creator.

The opening credits of this series are accompanied by the " I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal, You song. And this story about the ultimate loser who even fails to properly assassinate the President (it's the doctor who actually kills Garfield) is innately humorous. The humor, however, is dry because of the sterile material. The show is so busy respecting James and so busy mocking Charles that it forgets to be an engaging piece of work. You know a show is in real trouble when you find yourself recommending Wikipedia pages, but they, at least, give you the full picture, complete with the saint vs non-achiever essence that Death by Lightning tries to capture. Makowsky has built his shrine and his circus, but there is no fun to be had here.

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