“The best thing you can do before you decide to marry someone is go through something traumatic together.” The sentiment is advice both unwanted and uncomfortable, given to Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco) at their rehearsal dinner, offered by guests who might as well be strangers. Neither half of the married couple-to-be seeks counsel from these folks. They’re like Dutch uncles, except the words of wisdom neither seem wise nor constructive, and which bluntly punctuate the thrust of “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen,” the ostensible story of Rachel and Nicky’s special day, disrupted by an unfortunate rash of eerie goings-on.
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The show is a mess to start; unfolding over its opening few episodes, it becomes the good sort, where characters alternately grow or come unhinged, and where what looks like a sloppy kitchen-sink approach to horror is clarified as set-up. It could even be a gag, or misdirection intended to set a jumbled impression: showrunner Haley Z. Boston evokes David Lynch’s surrealismand indulges the genre’s “creepy family with secrets” trope while establishing its backdrop–a snow-capped hinterland dotted by empty neon-lit bars, a derelict custard stand, and an exorbitant “cabin” that serves as the show’s primary setting. The place is actually a mansion. Stanley Kubrick would’ve loved it.
But “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” swiftly demystifies its collection of mysteries and steers itself out of the scattershot poser territory long occupied by Ryan Murphy and his increasingly abysmal “American Horror Story” franchise, which is best thought of as a big idiotic sandbox where people play who know how to talk about horror for the sake of brand maintenance but don’t have appear to have a genuine relationship to it. Boston, on the other hand, understands horror’s porousness and flexibility in substantial terms; the genre is a sponge for whatever social anxieties happen to plague us at any given moment in history, and malleable enough to suit multiple niches, whether concurrently or in slow burn succession. She opts for the latter.
The plot introduces Rachel and Nicky as very much in love, driving to roughly the middle of nowhere to finally meet his family before their big day: Portia (Gus Birney), his younger sister; Jules (Jeff Wilbusch), his older brother; Nell (Karla Crome), his sister-in-law; and his parents, Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Boris (Ted Levine). (Jules and Nell have a precocious oddball son, but he more or less vanishes from the show as events progress.) Immediately, the vibes feel off. Along their nigh-endless drive, the pair encounter, among other things, a baby left alone in a car by a rest stop, and a dive occupied by its bartender and a peeping Tom, played by Zlatko Burić, little by little Hollywood’s new go-to actor for playing eccentrics, villains, and villainous eccentrics; we know he’ll be relevant at a future date, or else there’s no reason to cast him.
But “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” luxuriates in the time it takes to get there, because Boston seems to consider the journey the more worthwhile part. She also realizes that every leg of her itinerary needs to steep in horror by varying degrees. At times, she keeps the oven cool. At others, she ramps up the temperature through her use of the score, dead space in the frame, and inky black lighting, where Morrone is often the most visible figure: she is isolated and disoriented, made vulnerable by both. Morrone keeps a calm sort of panic, a bizarre incongruity, but an effective one. Rachel is freaked out by her surroundings, her company, and the unnerving feeling that the series’ title is entirely correct, which it is. We don’t know what’s going to happen, or why, or how. Boston’s judicious deployment of lore–that vapid buzzword used when “backstory” would be preferable–manages the balancing act of dragging out its reveals without dumpstering tension.
There is a difference between suspense and dread. “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” is a superb case study in its very specific implications. Suspense is what we feel when we watch a TV show or a film construct a scene out of a well-worn shock value blueprint, and dread is what we feel when instinct sparks our fear, but we can’t figure out the reason. A séance toward the back half invites Boston to mimic Sam Raimi’s famous “shaky P.O.V. cam,” which just about confirms his influence on her work; that’s suspense. That shot always ends with the thing, whatever “the thing” is, ramming into a wall, a door, a tree. Dread lingers in the corners of a frame when the cabin and the surrounding woods seem menacingly alive. What hides behind closed doors or among the trees is a complete unknown, and no amount of sleuthing tells us what’s going on in Joel Menge. (Unlike Joel, though, we resist the compulsion to flee from spooky hijinks.)
Literally, this is a narrative about confronting family trauma and what a Herculean struggle it is to overcome awful, formative childhood events. Subtextually, though, “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” functions as a reflection on modern relationships, at a moment where fewer women in the United States are marrying and more and more are raising, as well as recalibrating, their standards for their romantic partners; a fated-to-be meet-cute has a certain appeal until “death do us part” rears its head. Reality is a jolt to the system. The “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” connective tissue clings to what remains when reality sunders from fantasy–a liminal space where they collide into an unrecognizable nightmare. Sort of like dating in 2026. [B+]
