A canceled Netflix horror-thriller is the perfect way to usher in spooky season
Four years ago, Netflix did what it does best: It axed an exciting new show with an excellent first season, leaving fans with only the lost promises of what could’ve been and a reminder that the streamer doesn’t actually care about the quality of its original programming. Marianne showrunner Samuel Bodin had plans to turn the series into three seasons, but in 2020, Bodin noted a familiar rationale by Netflix: There weren’t enough viewers to justify a second season. Thankfully, season 1 works perfectly well as a stand-alone story, and Marianne satisfies as both a thrilling and emotionally gratifying work of horror — just now with a cliffhanger ending.
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Marianne centers on successful French horror novelist Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois), who decides to end her bestselling series surrounding heroine Lizzie Larck and an evil witch named Marianne. At a book signing, a distraught friend from Emma’s past shows up to tell Emma that her parents are in danger unless she returns to her hometown of Elden and continues to write her Lizzie Larck stories. What’s more, the friend’s mother, Mrs. Daugeron, believes herself to be the witch from Emma’s books. But Emma left unhealed wounds among her old childhood friends, her family, and other residents of the town when she abandoned Elden 15 years ago, and she quickly discovers that her unresolved trauma is intimately intertwined with a demon who’s been haunting her dreams since childhood.
As Emma struggles to settle herself back in a home she never wanted to return to, she slowly unravels what has been plaguing Elden in the years since she left, starting with Mrs. Daugeron — whose face I still have to block from my mind if I get out of bed in the middle of the night. Played
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