I'm not a fan of horror movies or psychological thrillers but I thoroughly enjoyed the first season of “Dam”, Showmax’s original thriller.
As such, I’m equally thrilled about the second installment, which is set to make its debut on February 16.
It was the unexpected twists and turns, amazing local talent and lots of hair-raising scenes, coupled with skin-crawling moments that pushed me to get through the entire season in less than 48 hours.
It was no surprise that “Dam” was the top 10 most-watched streaming show on the platform when it premiered in 2021.
Fast forward to 2023, the show is back and it’s more sinister than before.
Created by four-time Safta winner Alex Yazbek, the small-town psychological thriller is set three months after the Spring Festival.
The cult’s ritual sacrifice seems to have worked. The rain has come and transformed the land.
Yola has no memory of anything since her return from her father’s funeral. Can she put the missing pieces together as diamonds are discovered, a mass grave is uncovered and a monster surfaces in the dam?
Still basking in the success of its debut season, Yazbek gave IOL Entertainment a glimpse into season two.
Season two is set three months after the cult’s ritual sacrifice, which seems to have worked. The rain has come and transformed the land. Yola is missing. Her sister Sienna fears she is dead but diamonds, and skeletons, are about to be found.
“This show remains unlike anything else on TV in South Africa. It’s going to be another twisty and twisted season of love triangles, monsters, and more suppressed memories being uncovered,” said Yazbek.
“’Dam’ has a particular view that I haven't seen on TV before, but which I wanted to see or experience on South African TV.
He continued: “Horror was not my choice of genre, but what I'm trying to do with the subject matter is quite difficult…
“I'm dealing with the hard stuff; there’s rape, there's misogyny, there's the land issue and if I dealt on a social realist level, I wouldn't be able to get as deep. It would be too dark.
"What I'm doing is I'm using the genre in a sense as a disguise, to actually discuss heavy subjects and still have that element of entertainment.“
Yazbek added that viewers could look forward to a new adventure in the forthcoming season.
“I don't want to give too much away but it's the same, but different. I'm the kind of person who gets easily bored or distracted.
“I don't want to do the same things. I thought, ‘what can I do differently that will keep me entertained while doing it, never mind the audience’?
“I came up with some outlandish stuff… maybe I went too far with my ambition because, you know, we've got tiny budgets. But I thought that I'm gonna overreach and if I fall on my face, that's fine, but I'm not going to be safe.
“The show’s highly ambitious. It’s very imaginative, and on some level quite hokey. It feels like a big movie that was put together with tissue paper, chewing gum and ice cream sticks.
“But I think that's part of the charm, because when you don't have the money, you need to have a sense of creativity and you need to improvise, you need to find solutions and I think we've tried to do that.
“And it's definitely got a very distinctive voice… it feels rooted and it feels truthful, even though it has fantastical elements in it.
Yazbek said he wrote season two in a way that viewers could watch it without knowing what transpired in season one.
“I wrote it purposely so that you could pick up what you would need to know from season one… I laid it into season two, so you would know enough of what happened.
“It’s self-contained. I don't think you have to watch season one to watch season two. I wrote it, not like not a continuation but like a cousin[ related, you know, it's from the same family… It picks up a few weeks after season one ends, but it's very different.”
The show will see Lea Vivier and Pallance Dladla return in their Safta-nominated roles as Yola and Themba, with Natasha Loring reprising her Safta-winning role as Yola’s sister, Sienna.
The award-winning show also features Antoinette Louw, Tarryn Wyngaard, Faniswa Yisa, Laudo Liebenberg and Francis Chouler, plus some new faces including award-winning actress Refilwe Modiselle.
“Dam” season 2 premières on Showmax on February 16, with new episodes dropping on Thursdays.