‘Something Very Bad is About to Happen’ amplifies wedding day jitters [MOVIE REVIEW]

Wedding day worries plague the minds of anyone participating in the great experiment that is marriage. Be it getting over little icks about one’s partner, praying that the rain will pass on by, or hoping one’s family doesn’t create a scene. With marriage comes great risk, as well as the chance of devastation. The image of a bride left at the altar, a bride bruised and bloodied, or a bride who dies soon after exchanging vows are all images in the cultural lexicon that are recognizable.

Haley Z Boston’s Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, the latest Netflix miniseries produced by Netflix darlings the Duffer Brothers, knows that a wedding day is rife for opportunity when it comes to paranoia, thrills, and lies. The horror miniseries follows bride Rachel Harkin (Camila Morrone) who ventures to the isolated “cabin” (aka mansion) of her fiancé Nicky’s large, very close, very rich family. From the get-go, Rachel’s personal life contrasts her fiancé’s, as her ‘small, private wedding’ turns into a 100-plus person event where she doesn’t have a single friend or relative on the guest list. As soon as the couple arrives, Rachel is taken aback by her future in-laws, as relatives vocally protest the couple’s quick nuptials and Rachel’s working-class background. And while Nicky attempts to affirm in Rachel that the wedding is a formality, his love and reaffirmation is unable to sway a nagging feeling in Rachel’s gut that something very bad is going to happen on her wedding day.

Rachel’s worry is rooted in her past, as her family doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to marriage. While this is initially explained away as worry tied to her parents’ unsuccessful marriage, her concerns are made even more concrete when she learns that her parents’ marriage didn’t even make it to the marriage bed, with her mother dying in childbirth in the moments after their nuptials. 

Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen takes the superstitions tied to marriage to the extreme, as Rachel attempts to navigate not only insensitive in-laws, but also the very real possibility that her family is cursed to die on their wedding days should the nuptials not be between soulmates. While Rachel struggles to navigate Nicky’s family traditions while investigating her own family’s past, she becomes more and more certain that her wedding days worries are wedding day certainties. This causes a divide amongst the couple as Nicky chalks up Rachel’s more extreme reactions to the approaching vows as wedding day worries, rather than something tangible that could result in her or his deaths.

Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen is a series whose very thesis is the title itself. In the first moments of the series, we are given the image of Rachel in a bloodied wedding dress. The shocking symbolism of the dress is enough to elicit interest in your more casual viewer, but for horror fans, Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen might scratch an itch in the way it refuses to tell us too early on what exactly is going on. The series itself feels effective in its ability to hold out a definite conclusion regarding Rachel’s paranoia, forcing the viewer to coinhabit Rachel’s concern as they too are unsure if she is indeed cursed or if wedding worries will derail the wedding regardless. As Rachel’s paranoia builds, her methods for trying to prevent her or Nicky’s possible deaths at the hands of her so-called family curse become more desperate, completing strange rituals and almost shamanistic practices to in theory break the curse. 

Rachel’s paranoia and her desperation to alleviate it resonates on a thematic level for me in particular. While everyone around her, even her own fiance, is dismissing her concerns as not-based-in-reality or attempting to comfort her with promises of how fabulous the wedding is, these efforts do not bring Rachel any comfort. Rather, in the moments where she does have clarity, Rachel is often doing things that to your normal bystander would look quite crazy, be it sneaking around the family’s mansion at night or lighting an effigy aflame, but these things alleviate her personal dissonance if only for a moment. 

As someone with obsessive compulsive disorder, I found the series particularly poignant for how it portrays Rachel’s empowerment regarding her own relationship and fate as a direct result of her refusing to purely obsess over this bad gut feeling and pursue action instead.  The horrifying part about Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen is the uncertainty in Rachel’s position when paired with the fact that the comforts she should get to rely on - her fiance and her soon-to-be family - do little to comfort or support her in a meaningful way. Rather, Rachel is left to stew in her obsession and only by compelling herself to action, be it by extreme and superstitious means, is what empowers her in the face of possible tragedy. While Rachel’s more extreme behavior to address her fixation with this idea her wedding will end in tragedy might shock viewers, they seem to give her the clarity to act and ultimately do what is right for her as the series finale ultimately reveals: is it all in Rachel’s head? Is it a real family curse?

 While Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen might not be Netflix’s splashiest mini-series release in recent years, it is well-made, well-acted, and promises a future for Haley Z Boston as a strong showrunner who can successfully nail non-linear chronology and maintain tension despite this stylistic choice. Camila Morrone thrives and gives a nuanced, emotional performance as Rachel as this soon-to-be-bride who goes from elation to paranoia, with strong supporting performances by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Karla Crome and Adam DiMarco.

Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen is now available to stream on Netflix.