Recent horror series
Nov. 9th, 2018 06:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamySounds about right:
Satanic Temple sues Netflix' Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for Grand Theft Goat
Sabrina gets a lot of stuff right but ultimately leaves me a bit disappointed. I love the casting here (Kiernan Shipka! Lucy Davis! Whatshisface from Coupling! MICHELLE GOMEZ, ffs!), and the idea of a more serious take on the teenage witch where the aunts are actually proper Satanists, messing with life and death actually has consequences, etc. And it tries so hard; it wants to be Buffy and Harry Potter and Twilight and Riverdale all at once. But it's so blinded with that that it forgets to do something with what it IS. For instance: The first episode sets up that the Satanists preach free will and left-hand path - and then the second episode immediately reveals them to be evil, hypocritical, control-freak devil worshippers. That should have been your whole freaking season 1 arc, guys! That would have let Sabrina (and Sabrina) actually have some fun with the plot, instead of immediately dropping her into the big Good Vs Evil yadayada. And why would you cast a bunch of comedians in a horror drama and then not give them anything to play with? I'm not asking for slapstick here, but just... you have a coven of witches loose in a small town; have FUN with it. Instead the plot quickly settles into a cookie-cutter supernatural YA drama, with the love triangle, the magic school, the life-vs-calling dilemma, the apocalypse, etc etc... Which it definitely does well, but never really brings anything unique to the table.
Haunting of Hill House is a lot more successful. It has very little to do with the Shirley Jackson novel, which is probably a wise choice; both because it would be hard to draw it out, and because the 1963 film version is hard to beat. Director Mike Flanagan has been building his horror pedigree for a few years with some very good if not great movies like Oculus, Hush and Gerald's Game; he's a bit of a traditionalist, but it really pays off here, letting him relax into the haunted-house setting and letting things take their time. It has family drama. It has moments of genuine dread. It has very few actual jump scares, but it saves them for when they're really effective. But above all, it recognizes that horror needs pacing (there's a reason very few good horror movies go beyond 96 minutes). Even in a Netflix binge world, Flanagan makes an episodic series where each episode gets to have an arc unto itself, rather than make a 10-hour horror movie, but still carries the forward momentum without a lot of sidetracks. Some of those episodes (the last one, in particular) tend towards melodrama more than is good for them. Others (the "The Body"-esque episode 6 for instance, see Flanagan's breakdown of the shooting of it here) are almost unbearably tense and dramatic at the same time.
Of course, being Netflix, neither show sets out to truly unnerve the audience or subvert the expectations of either viewers or algorithms. Both essentially set out to be the Stranger Things of their particular target demographic (where I obviously fit into one more than the other). After being disappointed by how Castle Rock fizzled out, I'm still not convinced it's possible - or rather, economically feasible - to make a bingeable long-form horror story in this medium. We'll see what they come up with next. At least The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell has cake and murderous muppets.
But damn, episode 6 of Hill House was good.
Satanic Temple sues Netflix' Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for Grand Theft Goat
Sabrina gets a lot of stuff right but ultimately leaves me a bit disappointed. I love the casting here (Kiernan Shipka! Lucy Davis! Whatshisface from Coupling! MICHELLE GOMEZ, ffs!), and the idea of a more serious take on the teenage witch where the aunts are actually proper Satanists, messing with life and death actually has consequences, etc. And it tries so hard; it wants to be Buffy and Harry Potter and Twilight and Riverdale all at once. But it's so blinded with that that it forgets to do something with what it IS. For instance: The first episode sets up that the Satanists preach free will and left-hand path - and then the second episode immediately reveals them to be evil, hypocritical, control-freak devil worshippers. That should have been your whole freaking season 1 arc, guys! That would have let Sabrina (and Sabrina) actually have some fun with the plot, instead of immediately dropping her into the big Good Vs Evil yadayada. And why would you cast a bunch of comedians in a horror drama and then not give them anything to play with? I'm not asking for slapstick here, but just... you have a coven of witches loose in a small town; have FUN with it. Instead the plot quickly settles into a cookie-cutter supernatural YA drama, with the love triangle, the magic school, the life-vs-calling dilemma, the apocalypse, etc etc... Which it definitely does well, but never really brings anything unique to the table.
Haunting of Hill House is a lot more successful. It has very little to do with the Shirley Jackson novel, which is probably a wise choice; both because it would be hard to draw it out, and because the 1963 film version is hard to beat. Director Mike Flanagan has been building his horror pedigree for a few years with some very good if not great movies like Oculus, Hush and Gerald's Game; he's a bit of a traditionalist, but it really pays off here, letting him relax into the haunted-house setting and letting things take their time. It has family drama. It has moments of genuine dread. It has very few actual jump scares, but it saves them for when they're really effective. But above all, it recognizes that horror needs pacing (there's a reason very few good horror movies go beyond 96 minutes). Even in a Netflix binge world, Flanagan makes an episodic series where each episode gets to have an arc unto itself, rather than make a 10-hour horror movie, but still carries the forward momentum without a lot of sidetracks. Some of those episodes (the last one, in particular) tend towards melodrama more than is good for them. Others (the "The Body"-esque episode 6 for instance, see Flanagan's breakdown of the shooting of it here) are almost unbearably tense and dramatic at the same time.
Of course, being Netflix, neither show sets out to truly unnerve the audience or subvert the expectations of either viewers or algorithms. Both essentially set out to be the Stranger Things of their particular target demographic (where I obviously fit into one more than the other). After being disappointed by how Castle Rock fizzled out, I'm still not convinced it's possible - or rather, economically feasible - to make a bingeable long-form horror story in this medium. We'll see what they come up with next. At least The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell has cake and murderous muppets.
But damn, episode 6 of Hill House was good.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-09 06:35 pm (UTC)And Sabrina is odd in the way it tries to be both enjoyable fluff and Hollywood Darkness. I don't dislike it, but I wish it had dared to commit to one or the other.