TL;DR: Under a Dark Sun is a gripping French thriller on Netflix that nails its character complexity and narrative tension, but fumbles the landing visually and sonically. Still, its haunting story and raw performances—especially from Ava Baya—make it more than worth your weekend binge.
Under a Dark Sun
Some thrillers grip you with edge-of-your-seat tension. Others coil slowly around your neck like a velvet noose. Netflix’s French mini-series Under a Dark Sun (original title: Qui Sème le Vent) is very much the latter. Six episodes long, this story doesn’t explode so much as it unspools, revealing not just secrets, but the slow decay of a family, a flower farm, and a woman who has already survived hell only to find new demons hiding in the daylight.
This is not a show that makes you feel safe. Not in its themes, its characters, or its cinematography. And yet, it’s precisely in that discomfort that it finds its power.
Where the Wind Blows and Withers
Let’s start with Alba Mazier, played with unrelenting fire by Ava Baya. When we first meet Alba, she’s already in survival mode. Fleeing something terrible with her son Leo in tow, she lands at the Lesserre flower farm—a crumbling estate that, much like its owners, is full of wilted beauty and secrets rotting just beneath the soil.
Alba doesn’t want to be involved. But thrillers never let you just walk away, do they? Soon, she’s embroiled in the Lasserre family’s bitter history, their current internal collapse, and a cascade of manipulations that feel both ancient and disturbingly modern.
If that sounds messy, it is. But deliciously so.
This series isn’t interested in clean arcs or good guys. Nearly every character feels pulled from the grey spaces of moral ambiguity, driven not by plot devices but trauma, longing, and vengeance. The sins of the past don’t just haunt these characters; they puppet them.
And in the middle of it all is Alba, a woman willing to burn down everything around her if it means keeping her son safe. She’s a lioness with a limp. A mother carved from steel, but already rusting.
It would be impossible to talk about Under a Dark Sun without highlighting Ava Baya’s performance, which is nothing short of devastating. This isn’t one of those stylized, prestige performances full of monologues and prestige TV flairs. No, Baya gives us something messier, more intimate, and far harder to watch. She doesn’t act Alba—she bleeds her.
There are moments when you’ll want to reach through the screen and shake her. Others where you’ll want to hug her and never let go. That emotional whiplash is intentional, and it’s brilliant. Alba is neither hero nor anti-hero. She’s a mother in pain, a woman pushed beyond every conceivable limit. Her love for Leo isn’t performative. It’s primal. And sometimes? It’s terrifying.
And Leo himself, a character who could’ve easily been reduced to the typical precocious TV child trope, is portrayed with a surprising emotional intelligence. He sees too much, says too little, and, crucially, never stops being a child. His love for his mother is unwavering but tinged with fear, confusion, and that heartbreaking sense of needing to grow up too soon.
It’s this mother-son dynamic that gives Under a Dark Sun its emotional nucleus. Every twisted revelation and betrayal circles back to this one fragile bond.
Plot-wise, Under a Dark Sun is a slow-burn puzzle. By the halfway point, you might start to wonder if the show knows where it’s going. There are a lot of threads: generational feuds, long-lost secrets, economic desperation, family implosions. And yet, in the final two episodes, something miraculous happens. The pieces snap into place. Not neatly—this isn’t a puzzle from IKEA—but in a way that feels lived-in and authentic.
It’s impressive storytelling, the kind that doesn’t sacrifice character development for plot twists. Every revelation feels earned, and more importantly, it hurts. You don’t gasp because something shocking happened. You gasp because you believed it would happen and hoped you were wrong.
Unfortunately, for all its emotional intelligence and narrative muscle, Under a Dark Sun drops the ball in the one department that should be a slam dunk for a Netflix thriller: the visuals.
To be clear, this is a show that wants to be cinematic. The framing often recalls arthouse cinema, with distant, still shots that feel like someone trying to capture loneliness through negative space. But it doesn’t always land. Key scenes play out too far from the viewer, both literally and emotionally. The result? Moments that should crush you visually instead feel a little hollow.
The score doesn’t help. In theory, the music is there. You can hear the brooding undercurrents in pivotal scenes. But it’s almost always too subtle, like an afterthought humming in the next room. Thrillers thrive on sonic manipulation, but Under a Dark Sun never quite commits to the power of its soundscape. It wants to whisper when it should be screaming.
Despite these shortcomings, Under a Dark Sun achieves something rare. It tells a story where nobody is wholly right, and nobody is fully wrong. It leans into messiness, into silence, into tension you can’t resolve with a single speech or act of redemption.
This is a story about survival, but not just from external threats. It’s about surviving guilt. Surviving motherhood. Surviving your own worst instincts.
By the end of the six episodes, you might not like anyone in this series. But you’ll understand them. And in a landscape flooded with thrillers trying to out-clever each other, that’s a far more valuable prize.
Under a Dark Sun is a flawed gem. Its story is taut, its characters unforgettable, and its performances emotionally raw. Yes, it stumbles in its presentation—but the heart of the series beats strong and loud. Watch it not for the twists, but for the truth it finds in broken people.
