Service: Netflix
Series Year: 2026
Watch: Netflix
This series could have been a movie. Correction, this series should have been a movie. So many speeches. So much dead air. So many repeating themes and shots and giant chunks of show where nothing is happening tells me this. A generally decent horror drama idea that could have been way better served over the span of 90 minutes instead of seven or so hours. That stretched timeline exposing enormous plot holes and the fact that the mechanics of the core narrative was somehow underdeveloped and incredibly vague to the point of confusion and frustration despite the runtime. I triple-dog dare anyone here to explain to me in plain English where the main female character’s family is from. Or exactly how this curse works and why it all started to begin with. Because, yes, this show all revolves around a curse on a family line, details of which are so muddled that even AI couldn’t untangle the knots.
Let’s get the main plot out of the way. There is a woman, Rachel (Camila Morrone), and a man, Nicky (Adam DiMarco). They’re a very attractive, engaged young couple driving to Nicky’s family’s secluded cabin in what I have to assume is supposed to be Upstate New York based on my best guess around some random hints (though is clearly Canada) to have their small wedding with his family. They talk about true crime podcasts to pass the time, and generally act like a young couple in love with being in love. Then weird stuff starts happening. Not the least of which is the fact that they show up to this “cabin,” and she learns it’s actually a really large, beautiful house in the forest and that the wedding is going to be a way bigger affair than what she was originally led to believe. Because Nicky’s creepy mother, Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is on the verge of death and just wants to see her son have a lovely wedding along with all their friends and extended family. There is also a baby left in a freezing car, some incredibly confusing family ghost story about the “Sorry Man” who lives in the woods around the house and Zlatko Buric doing his best Andre the Giant impression as a harbinger of doom in a bar right out of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Oh, and a father (Ted Levine, aka Jame Gumb) who is really into dog taxidermy and pre-digging a grave in the dead of night for his wife like a complete weirdo.
This family home soon turns into the prototypical haunted house. Things mysteriously go missing. People act like psychos and generally make Rachel uncomfortable and paranoid. Grated, she admits — despite studying to be a clinical psychologist or something — that she suffers from anxiety and is constantly under the influence of THC. So, who knows what’s in her head and what’s actually happening. But her reactions to things seems very inconsistent. One minute it feels like she needs to sprint away from the house and this whole wedding like Usain Bolt, but then a few hours later she is trying to ingratiate herself with the wacky family and acting like all this bizarreness is normal. It’s a little head-spinning and not how you’d expect a normal person to act.
We eventually get to the whole curse thing. The rules of which don’t make any sense. Which is problematic. But, essentially, it’s a curse meant to test if the person you’re marrying is indeed your soulmate. A curse put on Rachel’s family many, many generations ago and passed down through the ages to her mother — who unbeknownst to Rachel died from said curse — and then on to Rachel. A simplified version of the rules are that once a woman — though It seems to work on same-sex couples as well, so the curse must have been super-woke and clairvoyant — accepts a man’s proposal and sets a wedding date, she must get married that designated day by sundown or maybe, possibly pass the curse on to the man’s family. But, if she does get married and he’s not her soulmate, she will die horrendously that night. But, I guess if she is his soulmate, she’ll live and everything is fine. Now, what happens if you accept the proposal and just never set a date? Or, uh, like have to move the date of the ceremony? And fifty other scenarios that invalidate this stupid thing and throw the whole mechanism into head-scratching territory. What if you plan an evening wedding in the winter and the sun has already set? I mean, there are so many things scenarios that doom this plot device. Also, what the hell is a soulmate anyway? What a dumb concept. I honestly thought it was a joke when they first say it — since this does certainly have elements of dark humor to it — but, no, it’s for real.
Yes, I get that the core concept here is not the rules of the curse, but making them as confusing and vague as they are made me constantly miss the whole theme of marriage and if and when you should marry someone you may or may not feel is the perfect fit for you. Because I think that’s what this thing was about. Or perhaps it’s about this oddball vibrating invisible POV thing that runs around the house the whole time that may or may not be a ghost of a dead dog or one of Rachel’s great aunts. Or perhaps it’s like one of those little demon things that pops out of the toilet in The Gate. I watched hours of this show, but still have no clue what it was supposed to be. But, at the very least, they cast a completely bonkers Gus Birney to play Nicky’s sister. She’s on ten the entire show, and might just be a an Energizer AI pixie. She’s certainly entertaining and strangely alien-ish or other-worldly in like a mini, AHDH Elizabeth Debicki kind of way. One who looks nothing like the rest of her family, mind you. But at least she doesn’t have a completely inexplicable Israeli / Yiddish accent like Jeff Wilbusch, who plays their brother. It’s a confounding choice to cast him — a choice that becomes even more evident as his accent thickens over the course of the series. He clearly just gives up trying to cover it up. Perhaps this is why they cast a British woman (using her actual accent), Karla Crome, as his wife. As if her accent might make his sound more American by contrast?
Anyhow, as things move toward the wedding, Rachel is convinced she can figure out a way to wriggle out of this darned curse. Because, as it approaches, she becomes less and less convinced that Nicky is indeed going to pass the soulmate test. So, she… Well, she discovers that her whole family is from this town where Nicky’s parents live. Even though she’s from Oregon, I believe? This is where the plot goes haywire. Or, rather, goes more haywire. Because the writers just completely gloss over the fact that Rachel’s parents not only spent their wedding night in a cabin right near Nicky’s parents’ house, but the fact she was born in said cabin near Nicky’s house (and had no idea). A cabin that her parents seemed to be just visiting, but in a town where her mother’s whole family had lived for generations? What the actual fuck? It’s such a plot hole and such a disaster of a yada-yada that I’m not even sure how they had the gall to try to pass it off. But, hey, the series is about love and marriage and shit and not making sure reality is real! Which also explains how Rachel manages to get herself from sweats and a t-shirt into her complicated wedding dress, full-face makeup and done-up hair in what amounts to a couple minutes before walking down the aisle. Ask any bride how impossible that is.
Ah, I forgot to mention that the show to some extent starts with the end. Because of course it does in 2026. You see the bloodbath everything eventually leads to, but aren’t really aware of how or why until just before the actual bloodbath begins. But it’s a bloodbath from which a bunch of people run and manage to survive. And somehow completely neglect to call the cops. Nope, no police show up to the house full of blood. Dead bodies everywhere just sitting there overnight with nary a siren anywhere. Seems like something that wouldn’t happen. Instead we get more confusing rules for this whole curse thing. A changing of the guard so to speak that we got absolutely no clue about until it just kind of happens. And then yet another overly long scene of a character leaving and driving away that goes on. And on. And on. All the while you’re waiting for the twist or a cut or something. But, no, it’s just the end. Which, like a lot of the show, felt drawn out for no particular reason other than trying to hit a runtime. Or possibly leave the door open for a second season of what they’ve called a “limited series.”
All of which is to say that the first episode of this series had potential. Even the second made me think this could be okay. Things started to wobble a little in three and then by the fourth when the curse is unveiled, I could see the cracks start to form. It’s a shame, really, as the actors — especially Morrone in the lead — are dynamic and compelling on screen. Despite her looking distractingly like Dua Lipa. But the show just couldn’t support its main conceit once the supernatural nature of it all is exposed. And then the writing just flops trying to keep it afloat. This seems to kind of be The Duffer Brothers’ (who served as executive producers) thing: starting strong and then kind of losing the thread once the plotting seas become choppy.
