Marianne

It seems like years that I was frightened by a horror. Half way thru episode one and I am watching with my hands over my eyes. If you like being scared don't miss this.

Wow! I've known for a while that the French can make great drama and thrillers, but here they come with a horror series and they knock it out of the park yet again! There's an option for both subtitles and dubbing, and the dubbing works quite well, if you're like me and can't stare avidly at the screen at all times. I absolutely LOVED Marianne! The acting was great, the setting and buildup just right and executed correctly. The twists were really good and that ending means we need a season two! We NEED IT.

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.

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.