Marianne

France has brought us horror favorites such as 'High Tension', 'Martyrs' and 'Inside'. From Netflix, on the other hand, we got last year's excellent horror offering "The Haunting of Hill House". So I got really excited, when this French horror show hit Netflix and early reviewers seemed to be stoked. Unfortunately, 'Marianne' turned out to be very different from the examples above. It's mostly reminiscent of Sam Raimi's dark horror comedy 'Drag Me To Hell', including a gross out old lady, a lot of quirkiness and body horror. But the problem here is, that 'Marianne' also wants to be a drama. That doesn't work at all, as neither the story nor the characters can ever really be taken seriously. It's a tonally incoherent mess, jumping back and forth from scares to comic relief moments. The characters are either unlikable (such as the rather pretentious lead) or bland, or both. On the plus side, there's the nice scenery and cinematography. The scare scenes are mostly effective (albeit nothing we haven't seen before). So this could have been a great show, if the characters were more compelling, the narrative more straightforward and above all, void of the unecessary comic relief.

It started out great and there are a few good moments throughout but as it went on it got more nonsensical. The comedy sprinkled throughout was funny but unfortunately took away from the creepiness. Lots of hommage to horror movies (even anime) which was interesting but it got to the point where it was distracting. It was way overhyped on social media and it feels disappointing that it did not deliver to the degree that was advertised.

The idea of the plot was interesting, the cinematography was really good, many creepy scenes throughout the series BUT... the writers were really confused. The story is all over the place, everything is happening so fast (especially in the first three episodes), there's no atmosphere or mystery whatsoever. The characters are all superficial at best with no chemistry between them. And also what's with the comedy all the time?? Especially in moments when everyone is supposed to be worried. All in all, it's just sad that such a good story idea was so poorly executed. Watch it but don't have high expectations.

I really wanted to like this more, particularly due to the lack of descent horror series we have been facing lately. But it's very disappointing to see such a good cinematography wasted on a lazy story full of random silly rules, cliches and dull jumpscares. There's not one really scary scene and everything is so predictable. At best, it might serve as a generic teen entertainment for those not familiar with the genre.

I love horror, but I also know that horror, especially Netflix horror recently can be either really good or really bad, so I went into this with very low expectations, and, honestly, I was very pleasantly surprised. The first episode immediately gripped me and made me want to see more, more of these characters, more of this story. I feel like this series honestly does a lot of things right, especially the characters. I felt like I was never watching characters, but real people. Scenes were they were angry at each-other had a very real tension to it, scenes were they were happy and having fun with each-other make you feel happy to see a group of friends being able to see the bright-side in dark situations. And even the language barrier didn't bother me, sure I don't speak french, and sure the subtitles were a bit wonky every now and then, but still, I was able to understand everything that was going on. Of course, like everything, this series has some issues, but very minor (at least to me). Overall, this was a very well crafted, short series, that I hope does well enough to warrant a second season because, honestly, I can't wait to see where they take the story, and what will happen next given the circumstances of were they left off.