Hemlock Grove (2013) - 2.5/4

Hemlock Grove is yet another werewolf-and-vampire-based series, this one peculiar in being produced exclusively for Netflix. The directorial talent featured is primarily Eli Roth (Hostel) and Deran Sarafian (Interzone), two directors I like very much. That bodes well. But with TV or web series, it's not the direction so much as the writing that matters. In Hemlock Grove's case, the very promising content is consistently weakened by its sloppy writing.

Hemlock Grove is the titular small town where some girls are getting murdered by a mysterious animal that eats their genitals, chews them in half, and leaves their parts around town. Just before this starts happening, a gypsy boy and his mom, clearly werewolves of some sort, move to town arousing old enmity with the town's rich-folk, the Godfreys. The Godfreys, for their part, are clearly vampires of some sort and owners of a mysterious medical facility where god-knows-what experiments take place. Over the course of the episodes, these families draw together somewhat against a mutual enemy. Who could it be?

The plot and style of Hemlock Grove perhaps bares some superficial comparison to Twin Peaks. You have an ordinary town in which some murders begin to occur and the oddness of these people become manifest. HG is nowhere near is skillful as TP, however. Rather than slowly drawing us into the mysteries of these people, like you get in Twin Peaks, our face is rubbed into their perversion or oddness in the first episode. Flashbacks come fast and free early on, giving us full family histories. Content that should be meted out over several episodes is dropped wholesale upon us without mystery or intrigue.

The characters, for their part, prove far too mercurial. Some of them, like the Godfreys, begin so unpleasant in the first episode or two that their characters are essentially worthless for the plot. So the writers conveniently ignore all that was set up in the first episode to make them relatively affable people. This is particularly the case with one of the main characters, Roman Godfrey, the troubled badboy who becomes a sweetheart pal of gypsy Peter. Roman's mother, Olivia (Famke Janssen), probably the most heinous character in the series, suddenly becomes just as kind and compassionate. That's bad writing. They needed slow, careful development.

Even worse writing takes over in the final two or three episodes. A climax and resolution are necessary, but the writers have so written themselves into a corner that several uses of a deus ex machina are made to get out. Disappointments ensue as characters never reach the dramatic or ironic conclusions their development suggest--they just kind of evaporate.

The actors chosen are another problem. The veteran cast, namely Famke Janssen, Dougray Scott, and Lili Taylor are all fantastic, bringing to life characters that could have come across as very bland (Peter's mom) or belabored (Roman's mom). Kaniehtiio Horn as the perptually-in-hot-pants fortune-teller Destiny is the only young cast-member to hold her own with the elders. In terms of look and performance, Bill Skarsgard and Calvin-Klein-reject Landon Laboiron are just fine, their accents aside. But they lack chemistry that they really needed to make the buddy aspect of the series work. With the dialogue they had to work with, they aren't entirely to blame. But whomever we blame, without that sense of their fraternal connection, the emotional backbone of the series is an arthritic mess. Peter's and Roman's friendship is really the series core; it's too bad no-one making the series realized this.

These problems aside, there is a lot to like in Hemlock Grove for the horror fan. The werewolf transformation sequence is great. The various subplots introduce a multitude of oddities, from virgin births and mad scientists to intenstine-eating and glowing mutants. There are also some great gore effects. Some fun splashes of perversion. There are, moreover, far more questions than there are ever answers, which the final episode only makes worse. So, if you liked the series so far, there's probably more to come.