Now I have to review something that hinges on spoilers without spoiling it. Something very bad is going to happen, as I sidestep and talk around certain elements, or possibly reveal more than you might want.

This horror leaning series is largely about a couple, Rachel (Camilla Marone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco) seem like a typical young couple, headed out to get married. It feels like a strong interpretation of cold feet, with the dread being ever present in the first two episodes. I did start impressed, as I thought the creators were building lore that would pan out to make sense, give us genuine terror, and land that something bad does happen, either as a gag, or as sheer terror. Rachel starts out a pretty headstrong, uncompromising young woman. Some stuff in the first episode shows how unafraid she can be, and how Nicky is definitely not a toxic alpha male.She is not a damsel in distress, and he’d be unlikely to be able to save her if she was. Yet, as the series advances, and Rachel gets more and more information, she loses more and more of herself. How she ends, supposedly is a full circle moment for her, but she really barely resembles the girl we met in the beginning.

Rachel and Nicky are headed to his parents cabin in the woods, which is large, and holds not just this pair, but his parents (Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ted Levine), as well as his brother Jules, his wife, son, and Nicky’s sister. Plenty of space, for all the humans and taxidermied animals. Again, the show is good at making the family feel off-kilter enough to make you believe they are in on the something bad, but also abandons that. By the end, it isn’t the family that is the problem.

The problem is that Rachel is part of a curse. A long time ago, someone in her bloodline inherited a curse, and now every family member that has tried to marry, has died, for failing to marry their soulmate, including her own mother. Rachel has some conflicts, but mostly believes Nicky is her soulmate. My problem here, and where the show starts to lose me, is the idea of fate comes into play, as one of Nicky’s family members was present at Rachel’s birth, which was also her mother’s death, and was explicitly told to help save Rachel.What?

And then, we see Rachel going through marriage licenses at the local county clerks office, where despite Rachel not having familial connections, seems to be where her entire family keeps getting married, and activating the curse. At no point does Rachel, or any character, bother to ever mention the oddity behind the location, and why they keep getting pulled here. there are elements here that are creepy and would make some people run, but the over reliance on some serendipitous coincidence is what killed me on the show. From the point that Rachel knows all the information, and doesn’t even question the possibility that this is location based, or that the area has something to do with it, I checked out. Mind you, the shows starts with Rachel and Nicky having to make a massive road trip to even get to where they are because they live nowhere nearby. Rachel forgot her wedding dress in a moment we didn’t get to see, and where she forgot it was when she and Nicky stopped at a friends house, and that house is 8 hours away from the cabin,. That means they live more than eight hours from this destination. This is not Rachel’s home, yet for her marriage, she has been brought to within yards of where her mother died, which she could not give less of a fuck about.

That’s not to say the show is irredeemable. The playful attack on cold feet is admirable, with Rachel at one point needing to literally give up a part of her foot to get married. She literally has to give up the cold feet (not quite in the way it sounds). There is a late stage surprise from Nicky that changes the game a bit, and makes the finale a lot more surprising, but it isn’t enough. By the end, Rachel is a wasted shell of who we first met, and the show is lost in its own mythology never to be found again. The series isn’t even clever enough to make sure we have resolution on the main characters across the board, leaving some to off screen fates of interpretation.

The first two episodes are terrific. There’s a later episode that is directed really well, as if it was in a continuous shot, which is interesting even if the material in the episode is borderline idiotic. The performances are strong, even if the actors are sometimes asked to abandon their core characteristics. It isn’t their fault, this is clearly just not a good script. The show hails from the creator of Brand New Cherry Flavor, with the backing of The Duffer Brothers (Stranger Things), which helped it gain a following, but I think more people than not debated whether or not something very bad needed to happen. Rachel’s choices often feel like she’s actively trying to get herself killed, like the girl who runs up the stairs to get away from the killer, despite holding a gun, the stairs leading to nowhere, and there being an open front wider than a door giving her an excellent escape from the killer who is literally the opposite direction.

I know it would make it harder to get to the ending the creator clearly wants, but just because you have n ending, doesn’t mean you earned it, or that it is good, justified, or intelligent. If you don’t even bother with going through the steps of the magic trick, don’t expect the audience to be unsurprised in the end. Some fans will appreciate the acting, some will appreciate the episodes with tension, and others will appreciate the occasional gore. Most will check out because other shows are better written. Mike Flanagan has done a lot to elevate horror television, and I would have loved to see what he could have done here.

The audio description track has plenty to describe, as the show is obsessed with linking things together, images of foxes, or links to a killer ice cream man, and spurts of bloody violence. The film even has some stylish moments to its direction, but even a great AD track can’t save a show that is functionally hollow.

Something Very Bad did in fact happen, and it is currently streaming on Netflix. Well, maybe not very bad, but certainly not worth your time.

Rotten: 5.5/10