saino2001

The casting for this nine-part series was excellent, as were the production values. But I found the scripting to be both haphazard and endless. Initially, the pretty blonde governess, played by Victoria Pedretti, appears to be haunted by her former fiancé, but that storyline eventually fizzles out unexpectedly, as though the writers lost interest. Later, at Bly Manor, she meets two cute kids (played by Amelie Bea Smith and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) who act creepy at times, but are otherwise mostly normal. The first actual ghost we encounter is former governess (Tahirah Sharif), who was apparently seduced by bad guy Peter (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), but once again that's really got nothing to do with the haunting of Bly Manor. It isn't until the very end that we're introduced to Viola (Kate Siegel) and her tragic distant past storyline that started this whole thing. But the whole thing moves so incredibly SLOW. In the end, pretty Victoria Pedretti runs off to America with the gardener, played by Amelia Eve, but it's STILL not over as the plot drags on for another half-an-episode before resolving itself in a way that I did not feel made a whole lot of sense.

I watched the first 'Smile' film and enjoyed it enough to watch this sequel, but I can't help but wonder HOW they came up with all of these clever and terrifying ideas without anyone putting them all together to make sense. When this one was over, I had no idea what had happened or why. And that opening scene, where the guy kills the two drug dealers and is then run down by a car, WHAT the heck did that have to do with the rest of this movie? Again, there are some really scary moments in this one, but ultimately they don't add up to forming any kind of a coherent plot. It's just a LOT of jump scares that go nowhere.

I was ten-years old when the original 'Addams Family' television show first aired. I thought it was funny-but-silly. And then the 'Addams Family' films released in 1991 and 1993 proved to be more of the same, only by then I had long outgrown that kind of humor. For me, this 'Wednesday' series came as a refreshing and pleasant surprise, as it is neither predictable nor silly, and the casting is extraordinarily good! All eight episodes from season one were exceptionally fun to watch. Jenna Ortega is perfectly cast as Wednesday Addams, with Emma Myers playing her cute roommate, Enid Sinclair. I also love Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as Wednesday's parents, Morticia and Gomez. Wednesday's school, Nevermore Academy, is sort of like Hogwartz school for witches and wizards, complete with a fun cast of characters, including even a Voldemort of sorts. This is an overall excellent series!