The Spiderwick Chronicles

This series does not compare to the 2008 film. If you are expecting a fantasy show filled with faeries and creatures, you'll be disappointed. The creatures we do see spend majority of their time in human form or invisible. It feels more like a teen drama than any sort of fantasy adventure. I can count on one hand how many creatures we saw, and all were fleeting.

This series introduces two boys, Jared (Lyon Daniels) and his brother Simon (Noah Cottrell), who are opposites of each other. Jared is rebellious and gets into trouble, while Simon does what he is told. The premise is the Grace family moves to Michigan to take Jared to the same doctor who is treating their aunt, worried that Jared might be going down the same path as "crazy Aunt Lucinda" (even though there has been apparently no progress for her in the last 40 years). Unfortunately for them, Mulgarath, played by Christian Slater, assumes the doctor's identity. Together with his sidekick Calliope (Alyvia Alyn Lind), seek to bring death to the entire town of Henson, MI and beyond.

Christian Slater really carries this entire series on his back. His performance was great and reminded me a bit of Mr. Robot. The other characters feel awkward and unnatural at times, or downright inconsistent. The fantasy elements also seem inconsistent or changing to fit the narrative. For example, Calliope can shape shift.. but sometimes she knows who and sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes it's a perfect copy and other times it's not. This doesn't make sense with the lore given to the character.

Throughout the series, the entire cast attempts to convince Jared he is crazy and creatures are not real. This is despite each of them witnessing creatures themselves multiple times. It also feels there are no consequences for any of their actions. They either forget in the next scene or push it under the rug and not mention it again. Except for in flashbacks, which felt unnecessary and disjointed. The whole series probably could have been avoided if the Grace family actually listened to each other instead of always being terrible. I know some of this are aspects of their characters, but this dialed it up to 11. Sometimes the characters want to help Jared defeat Mulgarath, other times they don't believe anything Jared says. This back and forth was frustrating for the viewer because none of the characters had any consistency.

The anticlimactic ending to this series sums up how I felt during each episode, always anticipating something exciting to happen only to be met with more monotony.

There is also the issue of the not-so-subtle propaganda and messages throughout the series. The great Mulgarath wants to destroy the town because of... single use plastics? The "return to nature" fallacy seemed flimsy at best and broke the immersion whenever they started talking of their environmental goals.

Ultimately I feel this series missed its mark. Spiderwick is great because of all the fantasy and creatures and lore within the Spiderwick field guide. In this series we get a couple of pages and use them for comedic moments. This didn't even scratch the surface of the Spiderwick universe and felt more like family drama. Hopefully any future seasons will pivot to focus much more heavily on the fantasy aspect.

For the most part it's an enjoyable romp through the mythology that the spiderwick Chronicles created. But then it decides to take a turn toward an agenda that is pushing the story of mental health and post to do with people that have emotional problems. Which is a great topic and absolutely one that should be addressed, but not one that this particular series was focused on.

The music was well picked, the actors were chosen very well. And for the most part you're going to like even the smallest of characters. But the idea that this story has anything to do with this source material is completely lacking.

I think this is at least 3rd series in a row for me, that has nothing but aesthetics. The other recent ones were Fallout and Ripley. As with them, I can't say anything bad about the aesthetics and general style: it does look like what I would expect from a fairy tale. But the essence of the fairy tale does include the "tale" part.

It's just boring. Completely unremarkable, with quite a few moments ruined by telling things, rather then showing them. For example, pretty early in the show there is this moment, where Ogre (or whatever he really is) is trying to manage his temptation to eat a human. Most of the scene it's the girl (whoever she is) literally saying "Are you not hungry?". A good narrative would show a trembling hand trying to reach out to doorknob, but stopping (o being stopped by the other hand), or showing some more emotions, including hunger, on the face of the character (licking lips, salivating, clenching the jaw).

But alas, we have another case where book is transferred to screen in a literal manner, forgetting the whole point of such an adaptation. In a book you have to spell everything out, because you can't show things, since you can only rely on text and reader's imagination, which is dependent on how much details you provide. But on screen, you can not only tell things (which uses hearing), but also show things (which uses eyes - the main consumer of TV shows). Why modern shows has forgotten the art of visual story-telling is beyond me.

I really wanted to like the show- but Daniels and Cottrell are terrible actors. They couldn't even hold a gaze for effect.

How could they convince audience to believe they're here to save the day if they couldn't show confidence in their stride and speech.

Daniels is lanky and soft spoken. He could not match the right emotions with appropriate facial expressions. Cottrell could not carry a scene because he is too conscious of how he sounds and looks. His gaze is loquacious. He looks away frequently during intense moments.

After watching 5 episodes, I could surmise, the writers and the directors are completely disengaged and oblivious to the supernatural.

I blame the director(s) especially because he or she failed to allow characters to shine.

Everyone who played a teenager were super annoying, especially the ones that played the twins and the sister. Show reminds me a bit of Grimm, but Grimm was better. I can see why Disney passed up on this show. If theres a Season 2, i'd be surprised. Christian Slater was good as a baddie, but needed more witches of eastwick jack nicholson type acting.

The acting was all over the place. The plot holes also all over the place. I also felt these kids kept repeating themselves in every episode. I watched the show only cause i was already invested. We'll see. I gave it a 6 out of 10 cause there were moments that caught my attention.