HEMLOCK GROVE [Remote Control Freak]

The Logline reads thus: “A teenage girl is brutally murdered, sparking a hunt for her killer. But in a town where everyone hides a secret, will they find the monster among them?”

TWIN PEAKS, you say? That would be an excellent guess. The cult classic probably spawned later and lesser versions of the same premise of a murdered girl in a town full of inane characters and crazy secrets. But nobody’s ever going to rival the originality–nay genius–of David Lynch on television. (Even if he did decide to trash the end of the series with a big “F You” to ABC for cancelling him.)

Alright, THE KILLING,then? Actually this show was so un-original that AMC ripped it off from a popular Swedish show that probably ripped off TWIN PEAKS. The premise of it anyway. And I speculate, purely to make my point for this post that TWIN PEAKS rocks hardest and everyone else can kiss it. THE KILLING was more of a straight-shooting crime drama mystery than the soap opera storyline of its superior originator, so even though it wasn’t good, I doubt it was specifically related.

I digress.

The logline cited above comes from the new NetFlix original series, HEMLOCK GROVE. I can tell you from the title shot that werewolves are involved. Yes, that’s right. Netflix chose that bandwagon to jump on for its third dive into “original content” on its streaming service.

The show is capitalizing on the Twilight fan base by fusing it with a Fifty Shades sexiness that most other supernaturally-based network shows are missing. It also digs into its weirdness and gore a little deeper than TRUE BLOOD.

Admittedly I’ve only watched the pilot episode so I can’t tell you if it gets any better. What I can tell you is that I nearly turned it off based just on the opening sequence.

Close up on a brooding Billy Skarsgaard (brother of TRUE BLOOD’s Alexander Skarsgaard), sitting in a café staring straight ahead, hold for 20 seconds. Pan nauseatingly fast to a girl standing at the café door, staring straight ahead, hold for 20 seconds. Jump cut to the pair having sex in a car in the parking lot of said café. Seriously? This is how you choose to hook me?

It felt amateur and awkward and I wasn’t sure what was happening or why. The entire episode. Almost every female character is a thin brunette with similar features. So much that I’m not sure if the dead girl is the cheerleader or the girl from the sex car. Or if they’re on in the same girl. Though whoever she was, she’s having an affair with her female English teacher. That’s a new one.

Mostly I felt annoyed by every character. They’re all a little too dramatic. A little too serious. A little too, “I’m so mysterious right now, can’t you tell how mysterious I am by the way I’m acting all mysterious?” Yes, we get it, move along.

I was pretty sure I had everyone’s number the second they appeared on screen: Of course the main character is the werewolf that splayed open that girl like a baked potato. He even looks wolfish. And his mother drops the hint that he’s got the touch, or the gift, or the whatever. The point is, there’s something up with that kid. He wears black and sits around his house smoking and looking all…bothered.

I suppose if you’re a fan of this kind of storyline and enjoy every character being more than what they seem on the surface, even if they’re never as opaque as you might hope; where everyone has a secret that plays into someone else’s secret and they all sleep with and kill each other – then you’ll probably enjoy this show on some level. Once you get over the awful direction (thanks Eli Roth).

I happened to cringe through most of the pilot of HEMLOCK GROVE, but by the end, I was intrigued to see what else will happen. I tend to like the layers of a good thriller/mystery , and here there were at least enough small storylines dropped into the hour to give me something to follow and then become curious about. Maybe Emo boy won’t be what I expect after all.