Netflix’s Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen premiered on March 26th. Produced by the Duffer Brothers—their first show since the end of Stranger Things—the eerie, dread-filled show keeps the viewer questioning exactly what they’re watching.
The opening scene is a flash-forward, showing Rachel (Camila Morrone) walking down the aisle to her fiancé Nicky (Adam DiMarco) at a seemingly normal wedding. A wedding waltz plays in the background, but the sound of Rachel’s labored breathing quickly overtakes the music. A montage of moments in their relationship flashes across the screen.
Suddenly, the wedding music warps, and it’s interrupted by loud screaming. The scene changes to an empty hallway filled with pools of blood.
We are taken back to five days before the wedding. Nicky and Rachel are in the car heading to his family’s cabin in the woods when Rachel first starts to feel inexplicably uneasy.
As they get closer and closer to the cabin, strange things begin to happen. They find a baby abandoned in a car, the dead bodies of dogs, and a strange man follows Rachel, muttering, “Are you sure he’s the one?”
Rachel was already feeling unsettled about her wedding, but these concerns only escalated once she and Nicky reached the “little” cabin. In reality, the house is a modern, rustic-style mansion, full of Nicky’s shockingly strange family.
Nicky is the perfect coddled “baby boy” of his wealthy family, the Cunningham’s, while Rachel’s mother is dead, and she does not speak to her father. This difference becomes more and more pronounced as the show progresses.
His mother, Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is not mentally present, except when she has small bursts of lucidity, during which she gives ominous warnings about marriage. Her husband, Boris (Ted Levine), is an avid taxidermist.
Nicky’s brother Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) hasn’t quite healed from the trauma he suffered when he got lost in the woods as a kid. Jules’ wife, and one of Nicky’s ex-girlfriends, Nell (Karla Crome), has a son, Jude (Sawyer Fraser), who has unsettling habits of staring and randomly disappearing.
With this eclectic family of characters and each of their creepy quirks, there’s no doubt that Nicky and Rachel won’t be having a normal wedding.
The show raises many questions about marriage. It questions the notion of soulmates and also emphasizes the role of in-laws in a marriage—marrying someone means committing to their family, too.
While successfully keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat, most of the show’s horror elements rely on overused tactics like jump scares, found footage, and blood spurts. Additionally, a lot of the plot twists are predictable, such as Rachel’s missing wedding dress ending up on a Blair Witch Project-esque stick statue.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is a bingeable, entertaining limited series that amps up the fear with each episode. It’s a little slow to start, but the satisfaction of finding out why the family acts the way it does is worth it. For fans of horror, it’s a great, well-made addition to Netflix’s repertoire—just don’t watch it with the lights off.
