By Sarah Berger ’27
Arts & Entertainment Editor
“Something Very Bad is Going to Happen,” a new Netflix horror series, focuses on a couple — Rachel and her fiance, who is so forgettable that I had to look up his name for this article; it’s Nicky — as they’re traveling to Nicky’s family cabin in the woods.
A lot happens on the drive. Nicky and Rachel find an abandoned baby; later, Rachel is stalked in a women’s bathroom, finds a dead fox and stabs her keys through a man’s hand. When they arrive, it’s not a cabin they find, but a mansion inhabited by his creepily reverent sister, Portia, his potentially-perverted brother, Jules, his serial-killer-esque father, Dr. Cunningham, his relatively normal sister-in-law — and ex — Nell, her son, Jude and Nicky’s obsessive mother, Mrs. Cunningham.
There is also a potentially real, potentially fabricated serial killer haunting the area. Rachel is, understandably, freaked out, but she is gaslighted by Nicky’s family, who remind her that since she has no family, she probably just doesn’t understand what having one is like. It’s all a bit crazy, but not as atmospheric as it sets out to be.
The show suffers from an excess of jump cuts, as well as an attempt to make every moment uncanny. The first episode is excusable, but by the second, it’s exhausting. We don’t really learn anything about the characters besides their quirks, and all 45 minutes unfold in glimpses and gasps, slices and whispers. The show is dark and cool-toned, exemplifying recent critiques of movies looking colorless. Despite attempts to create drama, there isn’t really much on the screen to keep your eyes on it.
Without spoiling too much, by the end of the second episode, it is revealed that everything that the show was building up to was essentially nothing, at least nothing supernatural or devious; just something sad and deeply uncomfortable. The ultimate promise of the show is to be scary, and it succeeds at times, but it can’t resist undercutting itself with the next big reveal or plotline switch. Every bit of dialogue is so infused with melodrama or desperate attempts to be quirky that it becomes impossible to suspend your belief. Every single thing is reminding you that “Something Very Bad is Going to Happen,” and by the middle of the fourth episode, I was wondering when it would hurry up and happen already. By the end of the fifth episode, I gave up finishing the series in time for me to finish this review.
Spoiler alert: The series has been building up to the revelation that Rachel has a family curse that means she must either marry her true love or die at the altar. If she refuses to marry him, the curse transfers to his bloodline. This in itself is lackluster because we are told over and over how in love she and Nicky are, so it’s unclear why this would be such a bad thing, besides the fact that his family sucks.
In an effort to hide the corniness of this plot point, the show’s creator, Haley Boston, has said that the show carries a subtle message of heterosexuality being the true horror. Which would be fine, if the series did any examination of heterosexuality. Besides providing a cast of creepy husbands and weird wives, it doesn’t touch the issue at all.
“Something Very Bad is Going to Happen” has a few solid actors, most notably guest star Victoria Pedretti, who stuns in whatever show she’s in. All in all, though, the cast is wooden and over-the-top at the same time, so it can sometimes feel like you’re watching a poorly-executed mix of Seinfeld and Hereditary. I recommend watching almost anything else. Personally, I’ll probably return to watching “You” seasons 2 and 3, where I can see Pedretti without all the other mess.
Maeve McCorry ’28 contributed fact-checking.