Yahoo News Netflix's Marianne had us terrified in French
Netflix really made our Friday 13th this September by dropping all eight episodes of Marianne, a new French horror series. But will it scare les pantalons off us?
The short answer is that you'll know from the first scene whether this is your brand of scary: Ring-like images of a well, machinery, creaky industrial sounds and an old transistor radio. A caged crow makes Ark! Ark! noises. A gaunt woman approaches her mother, who's haranguing someone in the kitchen of a dark, old-fashioned French house, only to discover she's talking to herself and pulling her own tooth out with pliers.
She turns round to reveal… one of those faces. Well, specifically, one of these faces:
Call Me By Your Name's Victoire Du Bois stars as Emma Larsimon (that's not her with the pliers) a successful and cocky horror novelist who has just turned her back on the book series that made her rich. As if on cue, the younger woman from the opening scene shows up, and her unwashed, centre-parted hair alone would indicate to fans of Carrie that she is probably being oppressed by a spooky old lady.
It begins to come clear that Emma's books about a demon's wife are based on her teenage nightmares, and the implication is that those nightmares have now returned for their pound of flesh. Emma goes back to the broken-down coastal town of Elden with her long-suffering assistant Camcam to check up on her parents, and, naturally, her past catches up with her in all sorts of gruesome ways. We won't spoil it for you.
As with all horror, the story could be Shakespeare's finest but if the execution (not to say executions) isn't there, it just won't fly.
Fortunately Marianne's writer-director Samuel Bodin is a student of the old school and times the scares to perfection. An early scene where Emma wakes from her nightmares only to find she's still in them may be a cliché, but there's no denying the dread you feel as her boyfriend…
slowly…
turns over…
in bed…
to reveal…
And so on.
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The coastal setting, the author as protagonist and literary nightmares brought to life reveal Marianne was made firmly under the influence of Stephen King, but that's fine with us. At least it's not set in the '80s.
Likewise, high-flying drone cameras over a bleak, rocky coast, wintry trees against a white sky, subliminal flash-frames, chanting children, muffled pianos and stabbing violins can all be traced back through the likes of Wes Craven, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock to their well established origins. But a good horror doesn't have to be pioneering cinema. Not everything has to be Midsommar.
These tropes can be overplayed at times – we could stomach the glowering priest who suddenly appears out of nowhere with a LOUD NOISE but did he also have to be holding back a slavering, angry hellhound? But that's the price of a greatest-hits approach, we suppose, and we're willing to pay it. It worked for Netflix's Haunting of Hill House, after all.
Besides, Marianne is not without its innovations – we particularly enjoyed the flicky-page motif that indicates flashforwards and flashbacks (always handy when dealing with more than one time setting).
As played by Du Bois, Emma makes for a refreshingly complex lead – self-centred, tough and demanding, she's plausibly a literary rockstar. Old enough to have a past but young enough for us to see the vulnerable kid behind the brash exterior.
The predominantly female cast also marks Marianne out: Emma has a boyfriend (though not for long) and a father – plus that priest – but otherwise, in the first episode at least, it's a story about women. Not 'About Women' though – despite having a male writer, it's not noticeably (to this male reviewer) about women from a man's perspective, not an attempt to address feminity, feminism, gender or ideologies of any stripe, it's just got lots of women in it, getting on with the business in hand.
And at least one of them, sleeping in an old, dark house, wears sensible pyjamas for once. That's a nice change, isn't it?
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