Metal Detective is mixed with Dolby Atmos and mastered in IAX. IAX stands for “Immersive Audio Experience.” These two forces combined form one of the most cinematic audio dramas, for better and for worse.

The sound mixing, engineering and mastering is done by Charles Hewitt and his team. The man is no stranger to Hollywood sound, having worked on several films like everyone’s favorite Christmas movie, “Die Hard” and the TV/streaming show “Manifest.” Cinematography and musical score can only do so much with a bad story. Not to say “Metal Detective” is on the level of the 10 percent or lower movies on Rotten Tomatoes, but it feels like a lot of stuff meant for the screen remained after the adaptation into audio.

A Cozy Mystery in Dolby Atmos? Too Much or Not Enough

This movie is broken into four parts. Each one gets better and more interesting until the finale episode where if you had any idea what was going on, you have a better imagination than me. There were so many moving parts from different genres, including cyberpunk and a mystery in the style of an Agatha Christie mystery for the middle of the four-episode experience.

The deaths are reminiscent of “And Then There Were None” combined with a just as gruesome version of horror franchises like Friday the 13th, if not more. The world created by the screenwriter is very similar to Fallout 4’s main story plot involving synthetics or newmans in the case of Metal Detective.

Similarities to Fallout 4 and Plot Avalanche

District 9, I’d argue, is to Halo as Metal Detective is to Fallout 4. Both feel like, and sometimes started off as, stories in a universe with multiple entry points and angles with which to tell a story. I can’t confirm that Metal Detective started as a Fallout 4 screenplay, but District 9 definitely started off as a Halo movie, according to Peter Jackson in a Hollywood.com article. There are many similarities between the post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland and this cyberpunk horror with a mystery plot.

The final episode as hinted at above is a mess of climaxes some of which have foreshadowing attached to them. Others not so much. It could be that I missed some details early on, but I listened to episode four at least three times from front to back and each time I thought I knew less than what I began with. This is one those instances where the individual parts are greater than their sum total.

7/10 Stars