PLOT: A crew discovers that an alien shapeshifter has infiltrated their ranks, aiming to sow chaos, sabotage the spaceship, and eliminate everyone onboard. Like in the game, the TV show will see its characters trying to find the “Imposter.”
REVIEW: Despite the game’s initial 2018 release, Innersloth‘s online multiplayer deduction game, Among Us, didn’t reach the height of its popularity until 2020, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With lockdown in full effect, Twitch streamers and YouTubers helped catapult the game’s popularity, leading to a surge of players, in addition to terms and catchphrases from the game becoming a part of Gen Alpha’s everyday vernacular.
Now, Paramount and Among Us show creator Owen Dennis are bringing the humor, paranoia, and whodunit mystery of the game to audiences, with a star-studded cast that adds loads of personality to the anxious characters. Like the game, Among Us revolves around a crew of individuals, each with a different job aboard the ship, who discover that a shapeshifting alien is picking them off one by one. Essentially, it’s John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Clue mashed together, with a healthy dose of millennial-targeted humor to keep things spicy and topical.
Dennis hails from shows like Infinity Train and Regular Show, so dry wit, observational humor, and fun character interactions are the meat and potatoes of Among Us. The show captures the game’s vibes perfectly, with nods to Innersloth’s whodunit peppered throughout the first five episodes I watched. Each episode is roughly 15 minutes in length, making for a quick fix of laughs, mystery, and characters acting sus. The low-commitment runtime makes Among Us an easy and enjoyable watch, and each episode ends with a startling revelation that will have you burning through the season in no time.
While the premise and cliffhanger nature of each episode are enough to keep you coming back for more, it’s the voice cast that makes Among Us worth the wild ride. Elijah Wood plays Green, a hapless intern willing to do just about anything to remain aboard the ship before discovering that a murder-happy alien is violently offing his crewmates with vigor. Meanwhile, Yvette Nicole Brown plays Orange, a corporate shill whose dedication to MIRA, the organization overseeing the voyage, borders on disturbing. Randall Park plays Red, the ship’s captain who is woefully inept at his job and should not, under any circumstances, be behind the wheel. Kimiko Glenn plays Cyan, a hippy-dippy optimist who struggles to cope with the spiritual toll of the crew’s circumstances. Dan Stevens brightens every scene as Blue (probably my favorite character in the show), a doctor with unfathomable sex appeal. At the same time, Wayne Knight plays Lime, a mechanic with a doomsday prepper aura. Phil LaMarr voices Brown, a cook who is thick as thieves with Yellow (Debra Wilson) and feels as if the limits of the ship stifle his creativity. Elsewhere, Ashley Johnson voices Purple, the ship’s head of security, Liv Hewson voices Black, a disaffected rebel, and Patton Oswalt voices White, a crewmember who appears to have a natural talent for just about everything.
The cast, all gifted voice actors, bring plenty of energy, humor, and drama to their roles. It’s almost impossible to know who will bite the dust and when, making Among Us a show that keeps you on your toes, the guessing game always afoot. The comedy, while mostly delivered through dialogue instead of sight gags, is smart, topical, and biting. The show goes out of its way to lampoon the ineptitude of corporations and comment on the cold, out-of-touch cadence of people in charge of expeditions that cost untold millions to execute. The joke delivery is often dry (which is the way I like my humor), but the wildly different personalities aboard the ship offer variety and uniqueness to the presentation.
Among Us is fairly straightforward, but it does eventually venture into Regular Show-esque weirdness by making changes to the ship’s environment without warning. During the fifth and final episode of my preview, things got strange, adding an air of WTF to my viewing experience. The change in atmosphere was a fun way to keep me guessing as to what the show would throw at me next, and I hope to see more of that unpredictability in the remaining episodes.
I’ll be interested to see how audiences react to Among Us. Aspects of the show feel too mature for the game’s younger players, especially in its lampooning of corporate culture. In contrast, non-gamers could feel as if they’re missing out on some of the nods to Innersloth’s wildly popular gaming sensation. Thankfully, Among Us does a good job of meeting people in the middle and providing enough for casuals to grasp the concept and run with it. If whodunits are your jam, Among Us is a fun get-in-get-out animated mystery that will keep you guessing and laughing as crewmates steadily meet a tragic and bloody end with almost every episode.