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Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, which streams on MGM+, was created and written by Anthony Horowitz, the best-selling author whose work is frequently adapted for TV – The Moonflower Murders and its sequel The Magpie Murders, Alex Rider, Foyle’s War – and for Nine Bodies, Horowitz has set up a murder mystery in a jungle with more than a few references to Agatha Christie. When a plane crash leaves a small group of survivors to fend for themselves with no guarantee of rescue, the finger-pointing begins almost immediately. But so do the questions for the viewing audience, since Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue uses nonlinear storytelling to show us a version of the crash victims’ future. And in that version, there are less of them.
Opening Shot: A pickup truck with two passengers blasts through a desolate and hilly stretch of northern Mexico. When the vehicle reaches a rise overlooking a Mexican military compound, they pretend to have car trouble. But Cora (Carolina Guerra) is closely observing what goes on below.
The Gist: As titles explain, the opening scenes of Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue take place on “Day Nine,” and we see body bags being unloaded from an army chopper. But before long it’s “Eight Days Earlier,” and we’re in the cramped cabin of a prop-driven aircraft flying from Guatemala City to Houston. When Kevin Anderson (Eric McCormack) says he prefers jumbo jets to tiny planes, his fellow passenger Sonja Blair (Lydia Wilson) offers a sly grin. “Law of gravity. They both go down at the same speed.”
Whether Sonja knew it or not, she was prophetic. Unable to stop the plane’s radical fuel loss, and without a functioning GPS, pilot Octavio Fuentes (Christian Contreras) braces for a hard landing somewhere in the jungles of Mexico. And though the flight attendant is killed in the crash, and Octavio himself is badly hurt, otherwise the passengers are shaken but safe. It’s “Day One,” the titles then tell us, followed by 10 human icons. But the able-bodied number of passengers and crew is already down to 8.
Among the survivors, there is also dissent. Kevin formerly practiced medicine, but he gets side-eyed by Zack Ellis (David Ajala), an insurance investigator, for trying to save himself over improvising treatment for Octavio’s wounds. Travis (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) and his wife Lisa (Siobhán McSweeney) are a MAGA-coded married couple suspicious of Carlos García Méndez (Peter Gadiot), a man traveling alone who says he’s a luchador. Mildly bickering Amy (Jan Le) and Dan (Adam Long) were on their honeymoon when the plane crashed. And Sonja doesn’t want to participate in any getting-to-know-you Q&A’s. Maybe she came to Central America, the Englishwoman snaps, “because I don’t want people to know me.”
The group is rationing available supplies, wondering what brought the aircraft down, and disagreeing about their chances for immediate rescue when night falls. And in the harsh light of Day Two is discovered a brand-new problem: their number dwindled in the dark. Besides the survivors, the crash debris, and a host of spiders and lizards, what or who else is out there with them?
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Speaking of post-plane crash craziness, Yellowjackets recently returned for its second season; Lost got 121 episodes out of a similar, albeit more supernatural, conceit. And while it’s not about the aftermath of a plane crash, the early going of Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue reminds us of the promising (but annoyingly canceled after one season) Teacup, where a small group of people must improvise their survival with only limited access to facts.
Our Take: Before we got around to wondering if their plane going down wasn’t an accident, and whether the crash even happening was related to – or caused by – someone on board, we were noticing the tone in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue, which seems to place the show somewhere between a murder mystery and a dark comedy. From the way the non-sequential storytelling teases the future while revealing tidbits of the past, and how certain characters feel purposely written as caricature – look how sinister these guys are, they gotta be up to something; see how cagey she is about her life, obviously she was on the plane to kill everybody – it’s as if Nine Bodies wants us to leap to conclusions before it sets up a rug-pull.
And maybe, when what it’s holding back is revealed, we will laugh. (You got us, Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue!) But maybe, we also might not. We will have to see who rises out of the pack of survivors, and how they get under each other’s skin. The murder mystery stuff is satisfactory, and could lead to unexpected reveals. But in Nine Bodies, it’s the suspicion and what’s left unsaid among its plane crash survivors that has us hanging with them in their jungle clearing.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: We’re back to the present day, and once again at the Mexican military facility. The men there have the downed flight’s manifest – ten souls on board – and they collected ten passports at the crash site. But there are only…say it with us now…nine bodies in a Mexican morgue. “Somebody’s missing.”
Sleeper Star: Going all the way back to his chilling work in True Detective Season 1, or staying really recent with his turn as Mr. Drummond in Severance Season 2, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson is always a top notch addition to any small screen cast. As a MAGA motel owner in Nine Bodies, Ólafsson’s presence is already being felt.
Most Pilot-y Line: “I promised to look after you.” Adam says this to new wife Amy no less than three times on their first day post-crash. Why do we feel like he’s overcompensating for something we don’t yet know about these two?
Our Call: Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue is a STREAM IT. There is already intrigue forming around the surviving passengers of a mysterious plane crash. What’s in store for these people once the series actually reaches the quantity and location of its title?
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.
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