Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen Review

Camila Morrone shines in Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, a creepy Netflix wedding horror that’s best when it trusts its instincts.

Rachel (Camila Morrone, of Daisy Jones & The Six) is getting married in five days. She and her fiancé Nicky (Adam DiMarco, of Overcompensating) are road-tripping to his family’s vacation home deep in a snowy forest for an intimate ceremony. It would be lovely, except Rachel barely has time to meet the in-laws before Nicky’s sister Portia cheerfully tells her about the Sorry Man, a local legend about a forest-dwelling killer who turns brides inside out searching for his lost child. Then a blood-soaked note addressed to Rachel arrives in the mail: “Don’t Marry Him.” Welcome to wedding week.

Morrone is a terrific lead. She takes Rachel so seriously that we invest in seeing her survive, whether the threat is supernatural, familial, or self-inflicted. Her pseudo-stepfather is Al Pacino, and maybe she picked up a few things, because she rises above a script that occasionally asks her to do things her character would never have done two episodes earlier.

The chemistry between Morrone and DiMarco is one of the show’s strongest assets. They feel like a real couple, which makes it that much harder to figure out how much we should trust either of them. DiMarco, in a nice pivot from the frat-boy energy he’s often cast for, plays Nicky as a sweet mama’s boy who can only watch his fiancée unravel. He sells the devotion so convincingly that you’re never quite sure if it’s love or something else holding him in place.

As Nicky’s parents, Jennifer Jason Leigh (Crime 101) and Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs) are a masterstroke of casting. Two instantly recognizable character actors who made their names playing some of the most unsettling villains of the ’90s, now positioned as warm, welcoming in-laws. Or at least that’s what they want Rachel to believe. Leigh has a few strong scenes to run with, even if the show doesn’t use her to her full potential. Levine brings stately authority to Boris that keeps you guessing about his intentions right up to the end.

Jeff Wilbusch and Karla Crome have tricky work to do as Nicky’s brother Jules and his wife Nell. Jules is in his second marriage and is kind of a nightmare, something Nell knows all too well. Yet they both develop a protective instinct toward Rachel that comes loaded with a question: when push comes to shove, will they choose an outsider over blood? Zlatko Burić rounds out the ensemble in a role I can’t describe without spoiling. His large presence and personality go a long way in establishing exactly what the story needs when it needs it most.

And then there’s Portia. Gus Birney (Ghosted) is the character destined to split audiences right down the middle, and she knows it. Birney is committed to going all in and then asking for seconds. She’s pushy, manic, screechy, delightfully obnoxious, and gifted the most horrifically funny lines in the entire show, routinely saying the worst possible things to people at the worst possible times. She will drive some viewers absolutely crazy. She is also exactly the kick in the pants the show needs every single time she appears.

The first two episodes, directed by Weronika Tofilska (Emmy-nominated for Baby Reindeer and co-writer of Love Lies Bleeding), are excellent puzzle boxes that don’t fully take shape until they’ve nearly reached their conclusions. They set up the meat of what’s to come without breaking a sweat and still find time to establish some seriously creepy characters who will factor in throughout the season. If you’ve ever gotten the heebie-jeebies going into a roadside restroom alone at night, you’re going to want the lights on for the first episode.

Production designer Dick Lunn (Hot Fuzz) does staggering work with the Cunningham home. It’s a labyrinth of curved hallways bending around a stunning snow-globe-like courtyard at its center, looking more like a doomsday compound than a winter getaway. It’s beautifully adorned on the surface but deliberately disorienting underneath. In all eight episodes, I never got a clear sense of the layout, and I think that’s the point. Colin Stetson’s score pairs with a well-curated music selection, and the opening credits land unpredictably, sometimes at the top of an episode, sometimes halfway through, sometimes at the very end.

What keeps Something Very Bad is Going to Happen from greatness is a problem of proportion. This is a strong six-episode show stretched across eight, and those extra hours expose the seams. Around the midpoint, the series peaks with a jolt designed to keep you on your couch, and it works marvelously. But from there, characters argue the same points in long stretches of dialogue that start to feel circular. One episode is built almost entirely around a McGuffin that turns out to be pointless.

Worse, the show establishes a specific set of rules that it expects you to take seriously, only to break one of them near the end without explanation. If you’re going to build a world with boundaries, you need to honor them or show your work on the loopholes. It’s a frustrating scratch to be left with when the itch had been so nicely handled for the previous seven and a half hours.

Still, there’s enough strong acting, jaw-dropping production design, and genuinely creepy world-building here to justify the binge. Boston has a real voice as a horror storyteller, and the Duffer Brothers clearly gave her the room and resources to use it. When the show trusts its cast and its atmosphere, it’s as good as anything in the genre on streaming right now. Just know that by the time you get to “I do,” you might wish someone had done a few more edits on the guest list.

Something Very Bad is Going to Happen is now available to stream globally on Netflix.