Marianne (review)
Review of horror show Marianne
Marianne (2019)
Marianne is a French horror TV show, it is gruesome, filled with suspense, visually striking and achieved a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Emma, a successful horror writer, decides to kill off her protagonist, and write something else, something less horrifying. The antagonist of her books, a witch named Marianne, is angered by this as she makes very clear when Emma returns to her hometown to face her past after witnessing the suicide of an old friend. The story takes place in a classic horror setting of the isolated seaside town, the grey skies and crashing waves contribute really well to the eerie, depressing atmosphere.
Thrilling, and often disgusting scenes follow, as Emma and her childhood friends face Marianne’s wrath. The show relies heavily on common horror tropes, not only the writer protagonist and isolated village, but also nightmares, a creepy priest and his dog, buried traumas, seances, little girl ghost, I could go on. Marianne is by no means revolutionary, but it does these tropes really well, making an entertaining and binge-worthy TV show. This isn’t to say the show lacks any creativity or originality, the show definitely contains some twists and surprises.
The main character, Emma, is not particularly likeable. She is self-centred, destructive and tends to push others away. After not long it becomes clear Emma adopts this persona to hide her insecurities and haunting past. Among her friends there is the love interest, the best friend she ‘unforgivably’ wronged, and her overworked assistant who sticks by Emma, despite the chaos that seems to follow her. While I didn’t fall in love with any of the characters, they are all undeniably human (except when possessed by Marianne of course), they are complex and contain both good and bad qualities.
Overall, I really enjoyed watching Marianne and would recommend it for any horror fans. There are some drawbacks however, one of them being the pacing, I found a few of the episodes to be a little slow, and there were a few moments when the characters took just a bit too long to figure out some things that I had long since realised.
Another is the way Marianne is physically represented. For the most part she inhabits the body of an old woman, which was clearly the best of her forms. Mireille Herbstmeyer nails Marianne’s physicality and unsettling demeanour, especially that classic evil entity smile. However, at some points, particularly nearing the end, she is shown as a corpse(?) version of who she was when she was alive. To me, this looked cheap, eyes bulging, tongue sticking out. It wasn’t emotive, it didn’t move and was very clearly not a person. It veered towards comedic which didn’t align with the sinister and disturbing presentation in the rest of the show. She ends as she was when she was alive, a Lydia Deetz-esque young girl in a black, gothic dress. I didn’t hate this, but it didn’t really paint the picture of an extremely powerful, centuries old, supernatural witch.
The show ends with one final plot twist: it is super disturbing and unexpected which would have been a great set up for a second season if it hadn’t been cancelled. It’s a shame as I would have liked to see more of Emma, her fight against Marianne, and how she makes amends with her friends.