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I hate to quit novels, movies or television shows that I’ve started. I figured that I’ve chosen to begin this so I must see it through to the very end. But I was tempted to jump ship with Hemlock Grove, multiple times. Towards the end I just put it on in the background and did other stuff while it loudly and dumbly played out it obvious plot twists and badly acted scenes of mystery.
I think the name “Eli Roth” should have been the huge glaring tip off point, like a giant neon sign flashing “WARNING” over and over again. I figured that American Horror Story had managed to take gore, camp, horror, mystery, historical and political allegories and make something wildly entertaining and watchable out of it. But that show frequently knows that it’s pushing the boundary, or is being ridiculous. Hemlock Grove doesn’t. Hemlock Grove takes itself far too seriously, and is deadly dull in the process, and is sloppily written. Too many characters, too many subplots, too many stupid deviations from the main story that add up too little and make no sense.
Even the most ludicrous of a premise can be overlooked if the execution is done well enough, and Hemlock Grove is like a third of the way there. The series looks gorgeous – the art direction and production design is top notch, there’s nice hair and makeup work, practical effects look stunning, costuming is well done, interesting cinematography – but that’s all it is.
The problems start off with the slut shaming and queer killing that’s so prevalent in the horror genre. Are you a young female who enjoys sex and doesn’t have any hang-ups about it? Well, prepare to be eaten out by a werewolf! And if you’re gay, then you’re either going to die horrifically or suppress your sexuality and change into a blood thirsty beast. It’s offensive and gross material, and it starts off with scene one of episode one and just continues on from there.
But that isn’t the lone problem; consistent writing is a bigger problem. Characters come and go with no real explanation, or their motivations change so quickly you’re surprised that the actors don’t break their necks trying to flip back and forth between their character fluctuations. In one scene two characters are fighting like crazy, the next they’re the best of friends. There seems to be a few scenes missing which develop the actions between these opposite interactions. There’s no smooth transition into any part of the rising action or character relationships, the writers just rush head first into trying to make the ending happen as quickly to the beginning as possible. Which is odd since many episodes run close to an hour without much actually happening, so narrative cohesion be damned!
I try to be nice to actors, maybe their performances are so broad and big because the director didn’t think to bring them down, or encouraged them to go so large with it. But there isn’t a single decent performance to be found in Hemlock Grove. Famke Janssen’s British accent is a particular brand of awful, and she doesn’t emote or add much inflection to any of her scenes, preferring to develop her rich bitch as an emotionless automaton. It wouldn’t be a bad choice if any of her bitchy one liners managed to land effectively, but they tend to land with a thud – but is that Janssen’s fault or the director/editor? Dougray Scott and Lily Taylor are wasted in supporting roles that don’t give them much to do. Taylor’s lack of worthy material is particularly depressing as she’s so effective so often, underrated really in films like I Shot Andy Warhol or a great supporting player in shows like Six Feet Under. Most egregious are Kandyse MClure and Freya Tingley who each deliver their lines in strange, bizarre cadences that sound like English being performed sideways. Tingley’s cringe-worthy transformation scene feels destined to bad acting highlight reels.
Hemlock Grove is only as effective as the budding bromance between the two main characters and it’s a mixed bag. Landon Liboirn and Bill Skarsgård chemistry seems more attuned to a budding romance, Grove has a strong homoerotic subtext that everyone involved seemed totally unaware of while making it. Liboirn is miscast as a gypsy werewolf who is supposed to be rather hairy. Frequently naked, we can plainly see that Liboirn isn’t all that hairy for a character that is consistently described by other characters as being borderline Robin Williams level of hirsuteness. Skarsgård gives a good brooding face, his accent is all over the place, yet there’s still something appealing about him. In a better vehicle he could prove to be as strong a supporting performer as his father (Stellan) or older brother (Alexander). It’s a pity that Skarsgård is sacked with so much of poor character development baggage, as if the writers wanted to make him a sexy, brooding anti-hero but started off making him a villain, then a good guy, then they split the difference.
What a mess. It frequently thinks it’s building up to be reveals that are shocking or profound, but are often neither. Surprises are telegraphed easily, and the payoffs are badly written. Any show that tries for a Twin Peaks level of weirdness will interest me no matter what, but I don’t know the last time I saw one so widely miss the mark. Serious when it should be campy, campy when it’s trying to be serious, disjointed and lazy, filled with an ugly streak against sex-positive characters, Hemlock Grove seems like the apex of Roth’s obsession with being as gory as possible without bothering to craft a coherent story or reason for it.
