Marianne

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.

Netflix promises a lot, but not always delivers. They did deliver, though, with "Marianne", an eight-episode French series that will fix your need for all things Stephen King and Conjuring-related.

The story's premise is as formulaic as can be in the horror genre, especially inspired by S. King's novels: Emma, a thirty-something French horror writer, has decided to put an end to a series of books that tell the story of Lizzie Lark, her heroine, who battles an evil witch called (you guessed it) Marianne. Emma has had enough of this character and wants to move on with her life, and, maybe, write something else, something more "serious" (she is a French novelist, after all). Little did she expect a former school friend, Caro, to show up at one of her book signing events, and scare her into returning back to her hometown, which she had left 15 years before, after a terrible tragedy.

The cast is solid, the characters interesting, diverse and well-developed. Some moments are genuinely scary. The pacing may at times be a problem, and the series slows down in the middle, but nothing too problematic. The script is clever and culminates in an extremely promising cliffhanger that will certainly leave you wanting for a second series.

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.

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.

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.