Hemlock Grove – Season One Review

On certain rare occasions, Netflix releases a show that it made in house. Hemlock Grove is their first foray into anything science fiction/fantasy/horror related (that I know of). There’s an evil medical corporation, werewolves, and a gory body count which leads me to think that they tried to do everything all at once for all the already proven audiences for urban fantasy and bloodsplatter horror then decided to go for the gold with scientifically dubious medical experimentation.

Anyway, the plot arc mostly concerns itself with a series of mystery maulings and the machinations of the Godfrey family as it relates to the small town of Hemlock Grove. Young Roman Godfrey (the extremely pale) and Peter Romansek (newly arrived in town) decide to try to find the killer. Cue the hoses filled with red corn syrup and ballistics gel with a side helping of soap opera melodrama.

First, I have to say a little about the structure and pacing. Considering how many flashbacks are thrown at the audience, thirteen episodes seemed like way too much. It dragged in many places. There are big gaps in the timeline and the story doesn’t do suspense well at all. For most of the series, there is no sense of urgency and there is great reliance on the presence of blood and guts to generate a scare. I know that the entire season was released at once and maintaining an increasing level of tension becomes difficult, but the story keeps going off on tangents and squashing the tension like an overripe grape.

Of course the characters themselves are partially to blame. Almost everyone is exactly what they seem and it doesn’t really change. Peter is a mostly nice person who gets picked on due to being Roma. Roman is extremely entitled and clearly the bicycle amongst the high school female population. Roman’s sister Shelly is sweet regardless of her appearance. Olivia Godfrey is clearly manipulative and isn’t burdened with an abundance of scruples. None of these characters end the series with a huge amount of growth considering how long it drags on. All of one’s initial impressions of nearly all the characters turn out to be right and none of them really break their type. Peter probably has the biggest progression arc, but most of that happens in the last two episodes (which I wished I had skipped to much earlier).

Since none of the characters do a lot of changing throughout, it bogs the series down in needless repetition that Roman is a womanizer, Peter is the new gypsy kid, and so on, when one could actually have Doctor Price at the super creepy Godfrey Institute disclose something about what he’s working on or watch Norman Godfrey at the mental hospital document the delusions and dissociations of his patients. Either of those would have been better than the endless rehash of who’s sleeping with who, who has a big secret crush, and which friends are speaking terms.

Heaven forbid the plot lurch forward during the middle sections. Had the characters exhibited some more nuance or some neat hidden secrets or if there was more time spent in the library where they apparently have an accurate book on “how to become a werewolf without the trouble of getting mauled in the process” I might have been more interested. For that matter, if they had dropped the whole “suspenseful horror” presumption and lightened up on the darkity-dark in places, I might have enjoyed it more. Dexter is a really grim series, but it never forgets that life is absolutely hilarious sometimes. Hemlock Grove must’ve slept through that part of how to make a dramatic series. The only really funny thing I can remember is the flailing I did regarding the discovery of one of the bodies (anyone with a functioning nose can tell a dismembered corpse from a manikin).

As a side note, Hemlock Grove apparently subscribes to slasher rules of engagement. If you find yourself stuck in a slasher movie and you are a woman, do not have sex. NEVER SPLIT UP. Don’t be a person of color as you will either be a victim or a villain. I found it pretty depressing to have such tired tropes trotted out yet again. Also, motives for villains would be nice as I find excessive moustache twirling “for the EVLOLs!!” dull.

Trying to put all of the big glaring warts aside, I did enjoy Doctor Price and Shelly. Shelly looks like something fresh from the uncanny valley, but watching her assert her independence in small ways against her mother and the diary she kept made her a far better character in a shorter space of time than all those hours watching Roman and Peter do something or other. I was absolutely crushed that Price was a minor character as he seemed to have the outline of a complex motive and a sympathetic side in addition to the creepy.

There’s a baseball bat of a visual metaphor going throughout regarding a serpent devouring its own tail, but I think that a broken record would have been more accurate for this series…with the exception of Doctor Price’s small subplot. Reanimation and revivification should be both cyclic and transformative (and creepy and unnerving) but it’s so underexplored and such a small part of the over arching plot of “find and stop the killer” that it never made all that much sense for other characters to keep seeing the ouroboros motif in metaphysical visions.

I liked the overall concept of the series and I really enjoy slow burns, but I demand episodes make some sort of plot or character progression in every episode, preferably both at the same time. Instead, I felt that Hemlock Grove spent far too much time chasing its tail like a hyped up puppy rather than do anything about the self-reflexivity that the image of the ouroboros could have been (and probably should have been) used for. Good for them, they caught the tail. Sadly, I don’t think that the series is sharp enough to realize that it did.

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