Devs had a mostly positive reception upon release, with the majority conceding that it was nevertheless testing of the viewer's patience. Given how forgiving people are of that and much more, I've come to the conclusion that a script need only name-drop "quantum mechanics" to win over the bulk of salivating sc-fi fans, giving birth to reviews with buzz words like "complex" and "emotional". Yeesh. The premise is interesting but promises much and delivers little. Devs is not nearly as thought-provoking or original as it convinced me it was going to be and barely dips into the ideas introduced in the first couple of episodes. The first half of the series moves at a quiet but acceptable pace, in my opinion, and it does not falter due to unnecessary indulgence as much as utterly bland/forced characters and a dreary lead performance. Episode 5, however, brings everything to a halt in order to deliver a series of largely unnecessary flashbacks and Episode 6 dedicates most of its runtime to a single, long conversation in which the main protagonist is explicitly told everything that the audience is already aware of (and a teaser for what they're not). Could bad storytelling be any more blatant? Garland has proven himself in the past to deliver on some high concept stuff but not without some flaws. Annihilation was a film that I found conceptually compelling and visually enthralling but painfully cringe as far as acting, dialogue and exposition are concerned. Devs has the same flaws but also fails on the conceptual level, making it feel like a big ole waste of time. It felt like Primer for preschoolers with a touch of The Matrix thrown in at the last minute (not to imply that Primer is sinless on the other end of the spectrum). I'm not going to pretend that I'm learned enough to pick holes in the logic of the science of the premise; I don't have a degree in physics and I don't go out for hard science fiction a lot of the time, but I honestly craved it to dig deeper with the concept. It often felt like Garland was holding my hand and never really getting into the meat of the concept's potential. The big crazy "WTF" moment at the end also just felt cheap and annoyed me almost as much as the twist in Interstellar. While Devs has some good ideas and decent charecterisation, for me it falls short due to unrealistic dialogue, uneconomic storytelling, repetitive and mediocre cinematography, and a failure to cash in on its potential. For all my harsh words, I don't think it's without merit, but it's certainly not worth 8 hours of your life.