My trilogy of awful projects starring Mateusz Kosciukiewicz is finally complete. To be clear, I don’t have any personal vendetta with Mateusz. I don’t know the guy personally, and vice versa. It’s just that everything I see him in turns out to be one of the worst pieces of media in existence. I don’t know if the problem lies in my taste or Mateusz’s choice of screenplays, but this sure is an interesting phenomenon. My tryst with the Polish actor started with a movie called Kiss Kiss, which was basically a mixture of every sexist trope and stereotype we’ve encountered throughout the history of cinema, with Mateusz giving an irredeemably awful performance. Then there was Hound’s Hill, where Mateusz was actually good, but everything around him was downright atrocious. And now, here we are with Project UFO, which is one of the most boring miniseries of the year, with Mateusz giving a nothingburger performance. So, yeah, let’s talk about it.
Kasper Bajon’s Project UFO tells the story of Zbigniew Sokolik, who hails from a Polish village called Warmia and claims that aliens don’t actually come from space; they live inside water bodies and use underground tunnels to traverse the Earth. Jan Polgar, the host of a TV show called Close Encounters (probably a reference to Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind), finds Sokolik’s theory to be interesting and has him on as a guest on his program. Sokolik naively believes in Polgar, only to be humiliated in front of all of Poland for his bizarre claims about UFOs and USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects). That said, after returning from Warsaw, the budding ufologist strikes gold in the form of Jozef Kunik, a farmer from Truskasy, who claims that he has not only seen aliens but set foot in their spaceship as well. So, in order to restore his reputation, Sokolik puts the word out there that he has concrete proof that aliens exist, thereby attracting the attention of Polgar, Wera Wierusz (Polgar’s professional rival), Comrade Secretary Henryk Wierusz, the local police, and the secret service. However, little do they know that they’re pawns in a much larger game that’s being played under the garb of the hunt for extraterrestrial life.
Spoiler alert: there are no aliens in Project UFO. It’s all a metaphor for fascism, I guess. I mean, sure, why not? Arrival was centered around an alien invasion, but it was actually about the importance of communication. The entire Alien franchise is actually about capitalism, with the dreaded Xenomorph being a physical manifestation of Weyland-Yutani’s greed and inhumanity. The beloved E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a coming-of-age story. But the thing about stories like these is that the focus on the gimmick (which is the alien) is equal to the emphasis on the themes and messages that are being conveyed to the audience. You don’t just put the word “UFO” in the title, never really show a UFO, and then wrap things up by saying, “Umm, it was actually about the Polish People’s Republic’s fascist history.” I’m sorry, but that’s just not done. I’ve seen artists lambast entertainment journalists for writing clickbait articles. I think it’s my turn to criticize this miniseries for being a clickbait TV show. And just like some good Samaritans out there who diligently warn the public to not give websites the views they want by publishing clickbait content, I am here to warn viewers to not press play on this show thinking that they’re going to be seeing.
Project UFO tried to satirize too many things and ended up being a whole lot of nothing. I mean, a straightforward political satire or black comedy around the events that led to the implementation of martial law in Poland would’ve been interesting and, most importantly, educational. But that’s used merely as a backdrop and tacked on at the end in such a haphazard manner that you have to do all the reading on the history and politics of the country yourself because the show was too busy dealing with the drama between Jan Polgar, Wera Wierusz, Zbigniew Sokolik, Julia Borewicz, Henryk Wierusz, Jozef Kunik, Lenta Polgar, and many other characters. If these characters were the least bit intriguing, I would’ve been more lenient towards the writing. However, all of them were so mind-numbingly boring, which wasn’t helped by the bone-dry humor and glacial pacing of the show, that I can’t help but wonder why Bajon fumbled such a potent premise. By the way, that’s the only thing that’s wasted by Bajon. The teams responsible for the cinematography, production design, art direction, costume design, hair and make-up, VFX, SFX, CGI, sound design, music, color grading, and everything else that you are receiving via sound and images have done a phenomenal job. Unfortunately, Bajon’s direction was so bad that none of it came together in a memorable fashion.
The performances in Project UFO are just fine. Piotr Adamczyk had to do most of the heavy lifting, and he delivered every time he needed to. Mateusz Kosciukiewicz’s character had the most amount of substance, but for some godforsaken reason, Mateusz was so committed to underplaying everything about Sokolik that the character became instantly forgettable. Maja Ostaszewska was appropriately glamorous and conniving. She didn’t get a lot of depth to work with, but every time she was on the screen, she lit it up. Julia Kijowska really elevated an otherwise confusing character with her comedic skills. Marianna Zydek was criminally underused. I guess Bajon has a problem when it comes to crafting solid female characters. I mean, his writing has a lot of issues, but he really needs to work on this one first. Adam Woronowicz was very one-note, despite being the primary antagonist of the show. Stanislaw Pak had enough potential to be up there with someone like Omkar Das Manikpuri from Peepli Live, but, unfortunately, he became a victim of Bajon’s scattered writing. The rest of the supporting cast was alright. They did their best to inject some life into the dead material that had been provided to them, and I hope they get to be a part of better projects than this in future.
Project UFO is inoffensive enough to give it a watch. That said, if you are going into it expecting to see aliens, I’m going to stop you right there and turn you towards sci-fi shows like X-Files, Love Death & Robots, The Twilight Zone (the original stuff, not the reboot), Star Trek (take your pick), Exception, and Parasyte: The Grey. If you want to learn about the history of Poland, just read up on how and why martial law was implemented and all the heinous stuff that happened over there between 1981 and 1983. But if you expect Kasper Bajon’s miniseries to be a stimulating mixture of these two aspects, then you are merely setting yourself up for disappointment. With all that out of the way, I have to bring up the enmity that I have unknowingly created with the Poles. In addition to all the Netflix projects that Mateusz Kosciukiewicz has starred in, I have hated the hell out of Boxer, Go Ahead Brother, The Hooligan, 365 Days, Soulcatcher, and Just One Look. I liked Mother’s Day, and I was lukewarm about Justice and Colors of Evil: Red. If this continues, I’m probably going to be banned from the country. So, if you have any recommendations that can change my mind about Polish films and shows and secure my future visits to Poland, please feel free to let me know through the comments section below.
