Eli Roth’s Hemlock Grove has finally been released in all
its glory (every episode is available now) on Netflix. Rather than doing a
weekly episode review, I will most likely do an all encompassing report once I've finished the series. However after seeing the first episode, I feel I should
deploy my initial response.
For those of you who are unaware, Hemlock Grove is set in a
Pennsylvanian steel town recovering after the brutal murder of a teenage girl,
Brooke Bluebell. This dreadful crime spirals the series into a somewhat bizarre
and supernatural version of Cluedo, comprising of werewolves, vampires, gypsies
and incest.
Our key players are the Godfrey family, featuring Olivia the matriarch,
Shelley, her giant, deformed daughter and Roman, her spoilt, drug-taking and
sexually promiscuous teenage son. The family are the wealthiest inhabitants
of the town, living in a mansion and hiring out carnivals and such. On the other side of the class spectrum we
have the Rumanceck family - Lynda and her son, Peter - stereotypically conforming to all things gypsy, such as living in a run-down trailer and shoplifting.
Eli Roth was notoriously quoted from Cannes last week that
this series will “fuck up an entire generation”. A very bold statement and one
that is essentially untrue. I realise one episode is not enough to inform a
full judgement on the show, but the first episode was hardly an impressive premiere.
We are introduced to the above main protagonists, all of whom are completely underwhelming. Arguably, the only
intrigue is for Roman and the whereabouts from which Olivia got that accent.
Technically, the show felt bland and struggled with continuity errors. The
colour palette mismatched on several occasions and the shot composition was
nothing but average. Don't get me wrong, simple shot construction is fine if you have an incredible script and strong performances to captivate
audiences but even that was lacking. Furthermore, if you want to “fuck up an
entire generation”, why open the episode with a beguiling sex scene featuring
Roman and his bizarre fetishes? It would have made more sense to give audiences
a proverbial slap in the face with a more ballsy beginning – the murder of
Brooke for instance, which, whilst not frightening and comprising of generic horror clichés, was in fact the strongest feat of the episode.
For a series supposed to be so gory, horrifying and
thrilling, the first episode was remarkably average and bizarrely constructed, missing out on many opportunities to draw in key prospective audiences. As a
Netflix original series, material should serve the binge-watch nature that the
platform provides – one can only hope, therefore, that the episodes become more
intriguing, and fast.
Have you seen Hemlock Grove? What were your thoughts? Post a comment!
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