‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’ Starts Strong But Loses Steam Before the Vows [Review]
Over dinner a few months ago, my date asked me how it was possible that I haven’t been married yet. The question made me laugh, but when I realized he was being serious, I told him that people have wanted to marry me; I just don’t want to settle. Besides, I’m not sure marriage is for me. Growing up, I always thought it looked like a slow, painful death. Sort of like, if I get married, something very bad is going to happen.
It might sound dramatic, but for anxious bride-to-be Rachel Harkin (Camila Morrone), the decision to marry her extremely pleasant fiancé, Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco), is one that might actually cost her life (and many others) in Netflix’s latest horror series, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Within the first five minutes of episode one, “Never Get On One Knee,” we are treated to a montage from the days leading up to Rachel and Nicky’s wedding as he prepares to slide a wedding band on her finger. We then travel through a dark, labyrinth-like hallway, screams erupting somewhere off-screen. The walls and floor are covered in blood. A dog whimpers as it walks through the carnage. Something very bad has happened, indeed.
To be fair, plenty of bad things happen before Rachel even walks down the aisle. As we find out, she never wanted to get married, but she’s willing to take a leap of faith. She’s also willing to brave the weather, which is getting progressively worse as they drive through upstate New York to Nicky’s family cabin. At a rest stop, they find a baby alone in a car, its parents nowhere to be found. Rachel searches for them in the restroom, where she finds a rotting carcass of a fox and its pups stuffed in the toilet, maggots wriggling in their gummy red-pink flesh.
Rachel can’t shake this funny feeling that she’s been here before. Somehow, she knows exactly what the mascot of the local custard shop, Coldie’s, looks like even though it’s been closed for years. But Nicky believes her when she tells him she’s never heard of it until now. He believes everything Rachel says. She has a “sixth sense or something.”
Over the course of eight episodes, showrunner and executive producer Haley Z. Boston (Brand New Cherry Flavor) and Stranger Things producers the Duffer Brothers challenge the couple’s belief in each other as well as the audience’s belief in matrimony and soulmates. How do you know if you’ve actually found The One? And even if you’re certain you’ve found them, do you actually know who they are? Is it possible to know anyone fully?
Morrone is doing her career-best work here as Rachel, a fiercely independent, vaguely artsy young woman who is trying to make the best out of a situation that is any bride’s worst nightmare. Her dress is missing. The intimate cabin wedding is actually a full-blown event with over a hundred guests. And the family doesn’t seem to like her at all.
This could be because Nicky’s never bothered to introduce her to them the entire three years they’ve been together, and we quickly figure out why. When Nicky’s father, Dr. Boris Cunningham (Ted Levine) isn’t busy wrangling his wife, Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who gives a deliciously creepy and breezy performance as the kind of woman you regret talking to at the farmer’s market) from wandering around the cabin early in the morning in her wedding dress, he’s skinning and stuffing the family’s deceased dogs in the basement. Then there’s Nicky’s wolfish older brother Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) and his second wife, the beautiful but distant Nell (Karla Crome). Their marriage is starting to sour, and once again, it’s Jules’s fault. His son from his first marriage, Jude (Sawyer Fraser), is a sensitive little boy who seems to desperately need a mother figure in his life. He certainly can’t cuddle with Nicky’s fashionable little sister, Portia (a fantastic, fast-talking Gus Birney), who decides it’s a good idea to scare Rachel and Jude with a story about the Sorry Man. According to Portia, Jules met the Sorry Man when he was a boy, and he’s probably still lurking somewhere in the woods. But Jude doesn’t have to worry about him. He only goes after brides.
But as they soon discover, Rachel isn’t your typical bride. There’s no limit to what she’s willing to do to preserve as much of herself as possible even as the family threatens to absorb everything that makes her who she is. As she tells Nicky in the diner, “I don’t want to be torn open.”
You might think you know where Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is going by the end of the first episode, but midway through episode two, “Bride-Shaped Hole,” we discover that everything isn’t what it seems–all of Rachel’s fears are explained away by a series of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and perhaps a little too much weed. But as soon as we settle into something more grounded, we’re treated to a supernatural twist.
Unfortunately, all of the dread and suspense that made the first few episodes work so well begins to feel draining midway through episode four, “The Witness.” The VHS footage used to tell Rachel’s backstory is an interesting choice and looks genuinely authentic, but the gimmick gets tired fast. It also doesn’t help that one of the actors in this episode–cough, Victoria Pedretti, cough–is so good here that you’re actually pulled out of the episode to wonder what this series could have been like if she were Rachel. This isn’t to slight Morrone–again, this is her best work and her chemistry with DiMarco is undeniable–but in just a few minutes of screen time, you realize that Pedretti would have made a far more compelling lead.
Without giving away too much, Pedretti’s character has the same intuitive abilities Rachel does, only they seem much sharper. Like most of the show’s mysteries, it’s an interesting revelation that ultimately does very little to help Rachel and goes absolutely nowhere. Even Rachel’s quirks–like her need to do “the thing” before having sex (we never find out what that is, but we know it has something to do with being locked inside the trunk at the foot of her and Nicky’s bed), or her ability to pick up on people’s secrets and images, like Coldie’s mascot–are mostly forgotten or discarded.
Speaking of Coldie’s, in episode one, we learn that the founder, Larry Poole, was a serial killer who murdered three women in the 90s. One of his victims, a young pregnant woman, survived his attack and recounted her story on a podcast Rachel and Nicky listen to as they drive to the cabin. When we meet him in episode four, we assume he’s going to play a much larger role in Rachel’s story, only for that to also go nowhere despite the inordinate amount of time we spend with him. It’s onto the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, that by the time the very bad thing that’s going to happen happens, it’s a relief. Finally–finally–we’ve made it to the bloody end.
I got the notion as I finished the series that Boston wanted to create something like Twin Peaks with its small town location, intuitive, dark-haired lead, and wild-haired man hiding in the corners of the family home, but it doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with its locations or images beyond saying, “Hey! Isn’t this unsettling?” It asks questions about matrimony, the idea of soulmates, and what we risk losing when we decide to enter a commitment like marriage, but it doesn’t seem to have any answers. Then again, do we really need them? We already know that marriage isn’t as beneficial for women as it is for men, that it comes with significant financial, emotional, and legal risks, and that you can marry someone and not know a single thing about them.
Ultimately, nobody can say for certain whether or not it’s worth saying “I do.” But if you’re going to take that leap of faith, you better do it with both eyes open.
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Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen
Summary
Tense and eerie at first, ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’ loses itself in images that mean nothing and mysteries that lead nowhere.
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