Image Credit: Netflix
Sometimes you enjoy a movie or a series but change your mind after a disappointing ending. With Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, a horror series produced by the Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things and streaming on Netflix starting March 26, your feelings and subsequent judgment go on a rollercoaster ride over eight episodes, leaving you both thrilled and perplexed by the end. Written by Haley Z. Boston by Al Nuovo Gusto di Ciliegia, a great lover of references, the show brings together many variations of the genre, but rather than mixing them, it takes turns, alternating between psychological thriller, atmospheric horror, mainstream YA with jump scares, mystery, the supernatural, curse horror, and feminist horror—all conceived through an M. Night Shyamalan-esque lens of subverted expectations and flipped perspectives.
At the center of the narrative is the young couple Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco) on their way to the family chalet (as he calls it; in reality, it’s a massive villa nestled in the forest) where she will meet his relatives and where their wedding will take place. Rachel comes from a difficult family background; she has a strange sixth sense—she cannot escape frightening visions of the future and the past—and is always on guard and wary. He is the classic mama’s boy from a good family: affectionate, thoughtful, and with a savior complex (curiously, DiMarco played a very similar role in The White Lotus, that of Albie di Grasso).
The first full episode, set on the road and chronicling the couple’s journey, and the second, set at the Cunnigham home—both directed by Weronika Tofilska—are masterpieces of tension and anxiety. Rachel is haunted by the feeling that something horrible (hence the title) is about to happen; reality is filtered through her gaze, which interprets every detail as a threat or danger, while the environment around her appears increasingly sinister, and certain events and encounters—unequivocally real—suggest that hers is not merely paranoia.
We’re in the realm of psychological horror, somewhere between Creggers and Perkins, and if the show had continued along these lines, stopping at three or four episodes, we’d have the best TV horror of the year. Boston, however, decides to stretch the narrative out over eight episodes, writing only the first two and the last, and delegating the screenplays for the others—and it’s a terrible decision. Given that, as is well known, the best horror is predominantly that which favors brevity (in the serial format, the anthology is often the best idea, and only rare cases, such as a couple of seasons of American Horror Story, disprove this), the problem with Something Very Bad is Going to Happen is the sudden shift in genre every couple of episodes.
After the first episode, the narrative continues to plunge the viewer into a state of anxiety and unease that is masterfully crafted. In the second episode, part cabin horror, part Get Out, Rachel meets the parents of Nicky Boris and Victoria: he, played by Ted Levine of The Silence of the Lambs, is a taxidermist and subjects us to the most gruesome scene of the series; she, fickle, intrusive, and a dispenser of ominous quotes about marriage, is embodied by a disturbing Jennifer Jason Leigh.
This episode, too, is a gem of tension that exploits the Cunninghams’ strangeness—the spoiled, acerbic, and chattering Portia (Gus Birney) and the cynical, ambiguous Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) seem related to the families from Hereditary and Get Out— then the series veers sharply onto the path of a supernatural (and woodsy) small-town mystery à la Twin Peaks, with Zlatko Burić from the Pusher trilogy as a worthy successor to Killer Bob. It’s a Shyamalan-esque section that aims to subvert and disprove the initial premises, mocking the show for its sinister aura and rewriting the disturbing elements as harmless, while simultaneously steering the viewer toward a rational explanation that attributes Rachel’s fears to suggestion.
The middle section offers a couple more chilling moments (we could have done without the scenes featuring foxes and dogs, but that’s just personal taste). It’s a shame about the extremely dark cinematography, which makes most of the scenes hard to make out. The final act is a worthy successor to Till Death Do Us Part crossed with Drag Me to Hell, featuring a hefty dose of gore, madness, and chaos. Netflix, in its understated humility, compares the series to Carrie and Rosemary’s Baby, but neither as the story of an outsider heroine with supernatural powers nor of a bride trapped in a cursed marriage does the series reach the depth required to qualify as social horror.
The final episode, which sees Boston return to writing, delves into reflections on marriage: how do you recognize your soulmate? How decisive is fate? How do you know if you’ll be able to spend the rest of your life with that person? Many questions (and answers) remain unresolved, and the pessimistic ending amounts to little more than a warning about relationships. Ultimately, Something Very Bad is Going to Happen is an interesting endeavor, but one that missed several opportunities to be better.
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