People dealing with the goings-on on a mysterious island has been a fertile subject going back through the history of TV. In Balaraw: Blood Island, a new Filipino thriller on Netflix, a woman goes to the mysterious island to find her missing mother. But both she and her mother have a past there.

Opening Shot: A shot of a rainforest. Tiki torches are burning and two men are in a wooden cage. When one is taken away to be tortured and killed, the other finds the door loose. He busts out, only to find that the island he’s on is so isolated no one will be able to help him.

The Gist: On her first day of work at a local hospital, Sabina Tejeros (Janine Gutierrez) is asked by her mother, Rebecca (Agot Isidro), if she still has dreams about the island and if the man she sees running in her dreams is in a picture Rebecca holds close to her. Sabina takes a phone call during her talk with her mother, and when she returns from the call, Rebecca is gone.

Four years later, Sabina is still looking for her mother, with the help of her girlfriend, Bulak Bernabe (Charlie Dizon). She finds out from a private investigator that shortly after she disappeared, Rebecca boarded a bus, with the intention of going to an island named Balaraw, which is not on maps and only shows itself under certain conditions. Sabina’s uncle Arturo Syquija (Ronnie Lazaro), a local cop, knew that’s where Rebecca was going and hid the fact from Sabina, citing that Rebecca didn’t want to be found.

Still, Sabina is determined to go to Balaraw, and sneaks off to the port town that can get her there. She’s joined by Bulak and Arturo, and they find a boat captain willing to take them there. But there’s nothing to see when they get to where the island is supposed to be — until a massive wave washes them all on the shore of Balaraw.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Jericho Aguado, Dodo Dayao, and Rae Red and steeped in Filipino foklore, Balaraw: Blood Island has a bit of a Lost feel to it.

Our Take: We’re not exactly sure what to make of what happens on Balaraw in the first episode. We see people held against their will, and there is definitely some ritualistic violence happening there. But the entire first episode is spent getting Sabina, Bulak, and Arturo to the island, with just enough backstory about Sabina to make things interesting.

What we know is that this isn’t the first time Sabina has been on Balaraw. This is the island that she envisions in those dreams/nightmares she has every night. How much she knows or remembers about her first time there, including how she got there and how she managed to escape, are still cloudy, perhaps even to Sabina. But the island was a powerful enough draw for Sabina’s mother that she ended up making her way there.

How Sabina figures all of this out is a little murky. We see her flipping through the file that Arturo had and wouldn’t show Sabina, plus flashes of an internet search that shows reports of planes and ships that went missing in the vicinity. But the hows and whys of the journey to Balaraw aren’t going to matter much once the trio is there, they find Rebecca and everything starts to go to hell. And the first episode does a good job of setting up that very scenario.

Performance Worth Watching: Janine Gutierrez shows a lot of determination as Sabina, who lost her job after punching a doctor, and is seriously considering swimming to Balaraw after not finding anyone to take her there.

Parting Shot: Sabina wakes up on Balaraw after the massive wave washes out the boat she was on.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Balaraw: Blood Island has the makings of a creepy thriller that answers some questions but asks others in every episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.