‘The Bondsman’ Season 1 Review – Gnarly Prime Video Original Scares Up Success

Prime Video, basically since it debuted as a service, has been quietly killing it (show-related pun intended) on the streaming scene for years now, especially in regard to originals. In recent years, specifically, they’ve ramped up their output, releasing a new season of The Boys and Rings of Power, as well as the first season of the smash-hit Fallout. While The Bondsman, starring Kevin Bacon as a demon hunter for hire, doesn’t quite meet the heights of those aforementioned shows, it still slots in as another strong exclusive for the service, and an unabashed, high-concept thrill ride through serialized storytelling.

On the most basic level, the log line is enough to draw a crowd, and it serves that essential purpose. If you’re tuning in to watch a movie star tear people (monsters, demons) apart in surprisingly horrific fashion, this show will deliver. It understands the appeal of its premise and refuses to overcomplicate it; the story has depth, and there are multiple stories within it, but when weapons come up and eyes turn red, all hell literally breaks loose every time. It’s nice to have a reliable piece of content that doesn’t try and oversell itself. This is a ridiculous idea, and that isn’t a bad thing.

In broader strokes, Bacon plays a “backwoods bounty hunter”, Hub Halloran, who is brought back from the dead in order to return escaped demons to the terrible place from which they came. At the same time, Halloran is rediscovering the life he left behind in his death, as well as the things that he’d forgotten make it worth living in the first place. It’s a surprisingly adept arc for a series that, at times, plays like a superhero CW drama. It goes without saying that Bacon is fantastic in the role, too, and carries the show on his back at both the highest and lowest points.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the series is the intensity of the violence it purports. A bounty hunting show in any context is bound to be violent, sure, but The Bondsman harkens back to the practical effects of horror movies forty years removed from our time, and to great effect. Skin is peeling off people like it wasn’t meant to be there in the first place; you’ve got holes in places they don’t belong, fingers falling to the floor, flesh appearing as spaghetti… if you can think of it, it’s probably here. In the same way that the series lives up to its zany premise, it follows up with a second swing in the form of the gore that comes with that. Whether or not you like it (or maybe, more accurately, can stomach it) is irrelevant to the fact that it fits like a glove.

But as a result of the series doing so much in scenes like these, and doing them so well, it loses itself a little in the mundane. Characters feel more like caricatures, and beyond Kevin Bacon’s Hal, you’ll be hard-pressed to grab onto any of the folks that follow him around. They aren’t bad characters per se, just bland. But the series offers enough in the full package to overcome that.

Sometimes, entertainment for entertainment’s sake is a good thing. The Bondsman won’t challenge your mind or change your soul with any sort of speciality (its handling of religious visuals and themes is about as noncommittal as it comes), but it will guarantee as good a time as you can get right now on the streaming front. Prime Video has constantly delivered on its original content, and this is no exception.

The Bondsman is currently available to stream on Prime Video.