Be honest. If you were looking at your wedding invitations and you saw the words “Don’t marry him” scrawled on the back, would you go through with it? Director Haley Z. Boston explores this question and many more surrounding family, relationships and the gravity of marital commitment in her new horror series “Something Very Bad is Going to Happen,” currently streaming on Netflix.
The show follows Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco), a young married couple who travel to DiMarco’s family’s vacation home days before their wedding. Rachel, who is planning, along with Nicky, a low-key, intimate wedding, begins to feel paranoid about whether marriage is the right decision for her.
The cast and production team are star-studded. Viewers will recognize Morrone from TV Shows such as “Daisy Jones and the Six”, where she played Camila Dunne and DiMarco, who starred in Season 2 of “The White Lotus” as Albie Di Grasso, and who recently played Peter in “Overcompensating.” Additionally, Weronika Tofilska, the Polish director and screenwriter who worked on TV shows such as “Baby Reindeer” and movies such as “Love Lies Bleeding,” is the lead director. The executive producers might arguably be the most notable names to come out of this cast and crew – Matt and Ross Duffer, also known as The Duffer Brothers, the duo behind the massive Netflix hit “Stranger Things”. “‘Something Very Bad is Going to Happen” is their first work since “Stranger Things” wrapped its fifth and final season after nine years of success.
Much of the show stemmed from Boston’s own fear of marrying the wrong person, but in terms of inspiration, she drew from an unlikely source: her parents’ marriage. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Boston elaborated on this source, explaining that “They have a really wonderful marriage. They’ve been together for 40 years, and they sort of unintentionally put a lot of pressure on me by showing me that true love exists. I was always weighing my romantic experiences against this sort of impossible standard…I was just thinking a lot about what makes someone the right person.”
The chemistry between Morrone and DiMarco is, almost surprisingly, amazing. Viewers might expect that in a show filled with horror, there would be inherently awkward dynamics between the characters, even if they are engaged to one another. But these two defy the assumption. I could easily see them starring alongside one another in a rom-com with the same level of connection.
Furthermore, Morrone is fantastic. To play a role like Rachel requires lots of preparation and research. Boston gave Morrone a list of movies to study prior to filming, including “Funny Games,” “All My Friends Hate Me,” and “Carrie.” Additionally, Boston and Morrone worked together to develop the character of Rachel, with Morrone noting that “she was reminded of girlfriends who felt a ‘crippling pressure’ walking down the aisle, as if something very bad were going to happen if they said, ‘I do.’”
The show taps into the larger conversation around the relationship between millennials and Gen-Z and marriage rates in America, which have been declining since the 1950s, but also the “dating recession,” demonstrating a lack of active dating among young adults as well as a large amount of concerns among young adults regarding financial concerns, self-confidence and past dating experiences. Boston addresses these issues head-on, and the overwhelming sense of dread you feel from the first minutes of “Something Very Bad is Going to Happen” is only the tip of the iceberg. “My mom told me when I was young that if you marry the wrong person, it could ruin your life,” she noted. “That haunted me and still does.”
Some critics have noted that while the aforementioned dread is an important aspect of the show, it tends to drag on. With a Time Magazine article titled “‘Something Very Bad’ Takes Way Too Long to Happen,” TV Critic Judy Berman notes that despite the promising cast and production team, “Something Very Bad is Going to Happen” does not deliver the way it was expected to based on the stacked team. As Berman puts it, it is “a stylish yawn.”
I think length is a worthwhile critique of this show. Watching it, I certainly found myself waiting anxiously for certain episodes to conclude, but it came less out of boredom and more from feeling overwhelmed by the anxiety-inducing scenes.
“Something Very Bad is Going to Happen” touches on important conversations surrounding marriage today, which, as a fellow Gen-Zer, intrigues me. Notably, the frankly haunting atmosphere viewers experience while watching the show is extremely well-done in my opinion, and this show is worth watching for that, if anything. Just don’t go trying to convince your cousin that they shouldn’t marry their long-time partner after watching.
