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Uneven miniseries pursues mood over scares
Netflix’s Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen certainly lives up to its name, delivering a bag of bad things with its moody story, with some proving to be great for what creator Haley Z. Boston set out to do, while others are just bad.
The series, co-executive produced by Stranger Things’ Duffer Brothers, opens with Rachel Harkin (Camila Morrone) and Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco) travelling to the rich Cunningham family’s extravagant cabin for their wedding and the odd experiences they face throughout the one-episode journey.
For the rest of the miniseries after the couple arrives at the cabin, told through the present, fast-forwards and flashbacks, Something Very Bad eventually culminates in an event that is exactly what its title says.
Built to test patience
Though it is marketed as a horror series, Something Very Bad is closer to slow-burn horror and outside of its first two episodes, it certainly takes its sweet time to crawl past the blood-smeared finish line of what it teased in the very opening shot at the start of the first episode.
On that front, it is immediately obvious that Something Very Bad was not necessarily made for mainstream horror fans, as it tests the patience of its audience and only works best for viewers that buy into its mood, themes, odd characters and even odder dialogue.
As the series opens with how it ends, Boston structures the story towards how it gets to the end – rather than what happens moment-to-moment. This is a double-edged sword: On one hand, the approach allows the writers to put in a constant, low-level tension that slowly ramps up, but on the other hand, those moment-to-moment scenes sometimes feel poorly thought out.
Something Very Bad also stretches its relatively simple premise thin, has plot threads that are unexplained, nonsensical scenes that feel like an afterthought and twists that take away from the experience rather than add to it, with the biggest twist – an allegory on passed-down family and generational trauma – being very likely to split audiences on whether it was good or terrible.
Marriage anxiety at the altar
Notwithstanding its shortcomings, Something Very Bad’s strength lies in how its horror is less about blood, gore, ghouls and what-have-you, but rather horror shaped around the idea of marriage.
Rather than the common narrative of “Let’s drop our recently married young leads into a haunted house to test their bond”, Something Very Bad uses thriller and supernatural elements to explore commitment, doubt and the fear of choosing the wrong partner to great effect by placing Morrone’s Rachel at the centre of the story to manifest Boston’s take on getting cold feet or marriage anxiety.
This is further aided by Morrone’s flawless performance. Carrying the series’ psychological core, the burgeoning actress sells Rachel’s paranoia very well. Never tipping into dramatic exaggeration, Morrone grounds the character in an increasingly surreal event. The supporting characters, who are largely the fiance’s family, add to the escalating tension even if they are archetypical of a cuckoo, dysfunctional family.
Something Very Bad is not without flaws, but for what it sets out to do by asking for patience and rewarding it with nothing short of a mood-heavy, psychologically-driven horror story, it is decent. Just do not let its opening lull you into thinking it is a series with constant scares.
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