A sleek five-episode thriller where Lilly Pulitzer pastels hide knife-sharp class warfare-elevated by Julianne Moore but hobbled by tonal whiplash.
Molly Smith Metzler's Sirens (2025) transforms her play Elemeno Pea into a five-episode dissection of wealth as psychological warfare, where Martha's Vineyard aesthetics mask something far more sinister than simple class commentary. This isn't just another "eat the rich" thriller-it's a surgical examination of how economic desperation turns people into willing accomplices in their own psychological erasure.
Julianne Moore's Michaela "Kiki" Kell is a masterclass in weaponized vulnerability, shifting from maternal warmth to reptilian calculation with terrifying precision. Her relationship with Milly Alcock's Simone-part mentor, part predator, entirely unsettling-creates the series' most compelling dynamic. Alcock matches Moore's intensity with desperate, fevered energy, while Meghann Fahy's Devon grounds the surreal proceedings in working-class pragmatism that cuts through the estate's curated serenity like a rusty blade through silk.
Visually, the series achieves something genuinely unnerving: Lilly Pulitzer pastels as psychological architecture, where every perfectly appointed room becomes a gilded cage. The cliff-top mansion doesn't just house wealth-it embodies it, transforming luxury into environmental control. One signature image-Michaela, blood-smeared, clutching a dying bird while staring through a telescope-crystallizes the show's central thesis: beauty maintained through violence, preservation through destruction.
Where Sirens stumbles is in its tonal inconsistencies, oscillating between sharp social satire and genuine psychological thriller without fully committing to either register. The series has ambitious ideas about class, power, and the intimate mechanics of manipulation, but sometimes loses its nerve, defaulting to familiar wealth-adjacent Gothic tropes when it could push deeper into genuinely disturbing territory.
The five-episode structure works in the series' favor, preventing it from overstaying its welcome while allowing each performer to fully inhabit their psychological territory. This is television operating at solid B-plus levels-intelligent enough to avoid pure algorithmic pandering, ambitious enough to attempt genuine social commentary, but ultimately lacking the sustained intensity its subject matter demands.
Sirens succeeds as camp-luxury horror with intellectual aspirations, elevated by Moore's hypnotic performance and Metzler's sharp understanding of how proximity to wealth can transform identity itself. It's beautifully appointed but ultimately hollow-much like the privilege it critiques.
6/10.
