The unmoored, unhinged and overlong "Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen" makes a couple of arguments for itself. One is an update on what the Duffer Brothers of "Stranger Things" are up to, now that their long-running series has come to an end. The other is the performance of Camila Morrone, who dominates the entire show, has a soulful face that the camera loves, and displays an actorly commitment to creator Haley Z. Boston's cockamamie project that is nothing short of noble.
Ms. Morrone alone is almost worth the price of an eight-part series, this one having a pedigree -- the executive producers include the Duffers, Andrea Sperling ("But I'm a Cheerleader") and Weronika Tofilska ("Baby Reindeer"). But there's a sense of the story being made up as it goes along, and a lack of anything urgent compelling it to move. Our hero -- Ms. Morrone's Rachel Harkin -- is traveling with her fiancé, Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco), to his family's home, where they are to be married in a week. The road trip is adorned with creepy humans, animal corpses, an abandoned baby, and an aesthetic that mixes David Lynch's "Lost Highway" with a film-noir gas station. The days, which tick off ominously, will be filled with dread and macabre in-laws; it's hard to say what's worse.
But portents of doom have followed Rachel from the start. And even if the pot she's smoking habitually is affecting her judgment, she's oddly oblivious to the omens: Hallucinations of a bloody wedding. Visions of animal eviscerations. The fact that Nicky might as well have “weasel” tattooed on his forehead. A viewer will be wondering why she doesn’t just grab the car keys and go. Easy: because the script won’t let her.
Speaking of altars, Ms. Boston is sacrificing narrative momentum on behalf of a pretty obvious agenda -- cataloging horror-movie conventions and classic devices and seeing if any still click. Many do. Nicky’s family home suggests the hotel in “The Shining”; his nephew, Jude (Sawyer Fraser), might as well be riding a tricycle. There’s no end to the creepiness that can be teased out of a production design featuring too much taxidermy, though watching Nicky’s dad (Ted Levine) actually skinning an animal seems like gilding the lily, sort of. Broken mirrors. Spiritual possession. A misplaced dress. Wedding photographers. There’s no end to the horrors. There’s also a family curse, which is what ultimately compels Rachel to stay, even at a reception that echoes Luis Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel.”
Although Ms. Morrone dominates the action and the visuals -- and cinematographers Bobby Shore and Krzysztof Trojnar clearly adore her -- the supporting cast also brings gifts to the ceremony. Mr. Levine plays a far gentler and more original character than we’re used to from him; Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Nicky’s mother, Victoria, has long turned her dying cadences into the voice of dread. Gus Birney, as sister-in-law-to-be Portia (no character of that name is ever less than stressful), is the wedding organizer/monster who drives everyone insane, and it’s not a long trip. But the copious bloodletting is as gratuitous as the lesbian romance that Ms. Boston and her crew of writers toss into the mix and abandon just as abruptly. There’s a lot going on, including a spinning of wheels. It may not be “very bad,” I hasten to add, but the “something very bad” in “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” is the pumping of 10 gallons of horror into a 5-gallon vehicle, which never really catches fire and whose wheels fall off.