SOMETHING VERY BAD… is just something moderately weird…

‘Something Very Bad is Going to Happen…’ might have an overtly ominous title, but it mistakes a continual sense of dread and conveyor-belt of disturbing visuals for an actual ‘pre-wedding nerves’ story…

A growing sense of well-judged dread is always a good foundation for an effective horror outing. The traditional maxim is ‘less is more‘ and most of the horror genre’s truly classic moments are, indeed, about the stretching and shredding of tension in the build-up to the actual reveal. But while there’s a conveyor belt of look-at-me, full-of-foreboding moments running through the premiere episode of Netflix‘s latest outing, Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, it feels less ‘growing’ more ‘continuous’ in its mission to echo its title. Yes, this is an opener, one that is about setting things up rather than knocking them down, and stuff randomly ‘happens’, but – ironically – there’s no real momentum or pace, just a maxed-out minimalism in which weird people wander weirdly around weird places acting…well, weird. It’s as if someone is exhuming a coffin of cliches, hoping that the pieces will get stitched together to emulate some equally potent golem.

Much has been made of the ‘next from the creators of Stranger Things‘ marketing, but the reality is that Matt and Ross Duffer are two of the Executive Producers, neither writing or directing any of the episodes and it’s aimed at quite a different audience despite the chills factor.

The spine of the story ( a young man brings his fiancée home to meet the folks and it quickly becomes clear that there’s far more going on in the family dynamic than is healthy) comes second to very cold fever dream-like and dislocated, vignettes are thrust together with mood but little obvious logic and no real sense of time.  Beyond the ‘getting married can be scary‘ motif around which everything pivots, the first episode has a to-do list of a near-crash, multiple examples of road-kill (not always in the road), an abandoned baby, a bar that couldn’t dive deeper, weird relatives, weirder urban myths, stuffed animals and somber warnings…  The second episode is less scattershot but involves people generally walking around the ‘cabin’ (read maze-like rural compound) being creepy (missing wedding dresses, overpowering sisterhood and effigies swinging from trees etc. etc.). But in making ‘mood’ the selling point, everything in Something Very Bad is Going to Happen seems clinically, rather than organically, designed to make you uneasy ™. It’s a Twin Peaks via American Horror Story reimagined by M. Night Shyamalan. (And, sorry, I’m one of those people who thinks Shyamalan had two decent films in him and while I recognise David Lynch’s contribution to the screen, I think Twin Peaks ultimately holds no deeper or clever meaning other than successfully trying to be weird for the hell of it).

Nor is it that the actors are lacking in talent and commitment, it’s merely that the characters feel like they’ve walked in from an assortment of superior fare.  Camila Morrone (late of The Night Manager) and Adam DiMarco (The White Lotus) are engaging and flirtatious enough in a self-absorbed, trauma-circling, millennial way but with the kind of sarcastic, self-knowing dialogue that feels great on the printed page or if you’re one half of the couple doing it…. but just gratingly twee if you just happen to be in ear-shot. Jennifer Jason Leigh is suddenly everywhere, all at once – not only here as the matriarch of the clan but currently playing a malicious ‘fixer’ in ABC‘s High Potential.

However, disturbing imagery and weird dramatis personae, even if atmospherically under-lit,  don’t automatically give one the shivers and by the end of the first two episodes, that anticipated shifting on the edge of your seats might be less about nerves and more a sense of wondering if both destination and journey are going to be worth the time on the couch when a ‘You get outta there, girl!‘ would be a  far better rallying cry.

It may be that I’m being too harsh…  Something Very Bad is Going to Happen isn’t very bad, it’s perfectly acceptable, passable suspense that has already found an appreciative audience, likely those who like their genre horror full of long shadows, longer stares and even longer family trees. The Art Department manage to make the ‘woodland cabin’ feel simultaneously cavernous and claustrophobic – no mean task – the lighting makes corners seem threatening and people hold stares and secrets just long enough to breed contempt. But the series, like some wedding events, feels like you should have congratulated the couple and then departed lest you linger too long…

6/10

All of SOMETHING VERY BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN‘s eight episodes are now available to watch on Netflix.