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.

The original book is my favorite fantasy story ever, it is full of wonderful creatures and was made to make people dream. It was the book that made me like fantasy and I got so excited to see more creatures than we saw on the movie. I expected to see a lot more since the série format would allow to explore the universe a lot more than in the movie. Well let's just say I was soooo disappointed, I wondered during the whole show when we would see hobgoblins, elves or mermaids... the only fit scene was the unicorns one. Wanted to see a show about fantasy, got a show one mental health played by annoying people.

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 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.

The ONE & ONLY redeeming aspect of this entire fiasco is Christian Slater's devastating performance, worthy of a real cast, crew, writers, producers and directors. If the last episode would have shown us that there was science fiction involved, and Slater had been transported into a D-list production from an A-list one, THAT would have felt far more believable. OK, actually, the actress who played Lucinda was pretty charming, as well, so who's to say how she might have done with adult-written dialog? The remaining cast could have been good; it's hard to say - the material they had to work with was so atrocious, repetitive and grating, it is almost impossible to watch. I did watch the whole thing - and, unfortunately, there is zero character development. So a character who says an annoying thing in the first episode will continue to spout the same time of thing throughout all of the whole 8 episodes - bar none. There's no relief from a gorgeous CGI fairy world, bc the producers largely felt it wasn't needed in this production. So you have Slater, the actress who played Lucinda, portaled into the worst television fantasy series to have been produced in decades. Watch the 2008 film or Willow or House of the Dragon or pretty much ANYTHING else, bc this is a dumpster fire.