Movies & TV Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen Netflix’s Horror Series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen Really Should Have Just Been a Movie The ten-hour series would have been far more tense were it whittled down to two. By Lacy Baugher Milas | Published on March 26, 2026 Credit: Netflix Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Netflix One of the more popular (and, honestly, downright annoying) trends in prestige television in recent years is the idea that certain series aren’t really even TV shows at all, they’re secretly 10-hour movies. This idea of pseudo-novelistic television imagines series as though each installment is but one chapter in an ongoing narrative, frequently jettisoning traditional or self-contained episodic structures in favor of a single, drawn-out story. The pace is often excruciatingly slow, episodes tend to end in cliffhangers, and it’s usually fairly difficult to distinguish one specific installment from any other, at least until you get to the finale, and the presumed payoff to all these hours of screentime investment.  The problem is that investment rarely pays off the way you think it will. (Or at least, seldom in such a way that makes the destination feel worth the often ponderous journey.) Even some of the best examples of this particular trend—big-name prestige shows like Westworld or True Detective—often struggled to justify the idea that sacrificing basic storytelling now somehow meant better storytelling later if only viewers would just stick it out till the end. And, let’s be honest, if Jonathan Nolan can’t fully pull the ten-hour movie idea off with Westworld, Netflix’s bluntly titled horror series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is definitely not going to manage it. (And, spoiler alert: It doesn’t.) A lot of people are undoubtedly going to tune in to this show because of the involvement of The Duffer Brothers, the infamous minds behind the streamer’s megahit Stranger Things. But the Duffers are only executive producers here; the series technically hails from creator Haley Z. Boston, and the vibes could not be more different. Darker, gorier, and a lot less funny, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen lacks much of the heart that helped the Duffers’ signature hit paper over some of its more egregious narrative flaws. Yes, this series is atmospheric and creepy, with a couple of surprising twists and genuine jump scares. But it is also often mind-numbingly dull, consistently poorly paced, and populated by cipher-like characters, many of whom are motivated by little beyond the plot needs of any given scene. The basics of the story are fairly simple, at least initially. Rachel Harkin (Camila Morrone) and Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco) are getting married in five days. The series opens as the pair are roadtripping to his family’s sprawling cottage in the woods, where they’re planning to celebrate with a small, intimate ceremony featuring their nearest and dearest, without all the bullshit excess that tends to go hand in hand with nuptials. Unfortunately, Rachel can’t shake the feeling that (you guessed it!) something bad is going to happen, an anxiety that’s exacerbated by several strange run-ins on their way to the Cunningham compound and one that meeting Nicky’s bizarre family for the first time doesn’t help disappate. (The show doesn’t really address how these two have gotten this close to the altar without Rachel ever having so much as seemingly speaking to her would-be in-laws. But let’s go with it!) As the clock ticks down toward the pair’s “I dos”—a fact you’ll always be aware of as it is regularly painted onscreen in bright blood-red lettering—tensions steadily rise as Rachel must decide not only whether she and Nicky belong together, but what it truly means to commit to someone until death do you part. Star Camila Morrone is luminous throughout—she’s a shockingly beautiful crier—and does her best with what is a fairly thinly written role. She and DiMarco certainly look adorable together, but the chemistry between Rachel and Nicky has a sort of damp squib quality to it, and it can sometimes be difficult to tell whether they’re actually in love with one another or simply attracted to the idea of having a permanent partner in their lives. (This is perhaps the most realistic thing about this entire series, but the story’s central emotional question is ultimately subsumed by more overtly life-or-death stakes.) Superstitious and paranoid, Rachel has her own share of family trauma: Her mother died young, and she doesn’t have much of a relationship with her absentee father. Lacking any real bond in her life that models healthy relationship roles, Rachel is initially overwhelmed by Nicky’s family of complete freaks, who are all the kind of weird that’s so off-putting, it’s difficult to understand why anyone would stay at their house for the weekend, let alone yoke the rest of their lives to theirs. There’s Portia (Gus Birney), Nicky’s sister, who insists she can commune with the dead and likes to tell bedtime stories about monsters that may or may not live in the woods. Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) is Nicky’s rude doctor brother, who has spent his life haunted by a childhood run-in with a murderer he still refers to as the Sorry Man. Cunningham matriarch Victoria (a delightfully weird but woefully underused Jennifer Jason Leigh) appears to have some mental health issues of her own, as well as some fairly dated ideas about the rules of family life. And dad Boris (Ted Levine) is obsessed with taxidermizing the family wolfhounds and arranging them as guards around the house. The concept of marrying into this family is disturbing enough on its own, and that’s before you add in all the eerie coincidences, uncomfortable surprises, and vaguely supernatural threats that Rachel is forced to confront on her way to the altar.  As you can probably guess from its title, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is not a particularly subtle show. The plot is pretty much spelled out for you before you ever see a single minute of it, and it’s fairly obvious going in that whatever the “Something Very Bad” is, it won’t be revealed until well into the series’ eight-hour runtime. The question then becomes: Is any of this worth it? Unfortunately, the answer is: not really. At least, not in the story’s current format.  The thing is, there’s a genuinely entertaining premise here, buried under a pile of red herrings and exposition, and if Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen were a movie, it would probably work quite well. The entire process of planning a wedding is often a horror story in the best of circumstances. (When you think about it, it’s a bit shocking that more films don’t take advantage of the effectiveness of this near-universal nightmare setting.) A tightly plotted two-and-a-half-hour movie (heck, even a four-episode limited series!) would probably be a lot of fun to watch, if only because it would likely force Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen to pick a lane—or at least find a better balance—between the more supernatural-themed aspects of its story and the family drama that dogs Rachel and Nicky’s walk down the aisle. As it stands, there are huge chunks in the middle of the series that you, as a viewer, will almost immediately choose to forget, rather than try to make sense out of how precisely any of the events in them managed to happen, let alone are connected to the rest of the story. (A massive family group therapy session—led by Rachel, no less!—is but one of several.) To its credit, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is atmospherically and artfully rendered. Decorative boughs that look like nothing so much as dead trees frame the altar. Soft showers of snow sparkle in various lights, appearing magical and foreboding by turns. The series’s most grisly elements are rendered delicately and with obvious deliberation, from rotting animal carcasses to elegantly spread pools of blood. And a claustrophobic sense of foreboding hangs over everything, leaving you with nothing so much as a pervasive sense that, yes, something very bad really is going to happen. If only the final reveal was truly worth the journey.[end-mark] The post Netflix’s Horror Series <i>Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen</i> Really Should Have Just Been a Movie appeared first on Reactor.