Are You Sure He’s The One?
In an era of tradwives, Netflix’s Something Very Bad is Going to Happen is the horror for our time, as it turns the prospect of marrying your soulmate into a bloodcurdling proposal.
My older sister and I share a love for horror and spooky shit. Growing up we bonded over Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a programme I was way too young to be watching, and nineties horror films like the slasher classic Scream. (I still have the franchise DVD boxset.) I have always thought my sister is braver than me, watching horror films on her own alone in the house. Something I can only do now I’m older. We don’t scare easily. When it comes to horror there are more misses than hits but both of us have a deep appreciation for the genre. We understand the possibilities of horror to explore cultural anxieties and unsettle ordinary social dynamics. So when my sister messaged me to recommend the new Netflix horror miniseries, Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, I knew I had to watch it. Fear rarely sticks around once the credits roll but if a good horror lands it will roll around in my mind. After devouring the series in a few short days, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.
The Duffer Brothers, of Strange Things acclaim, take the production credit but the creator of Something Very Bad is Going to Happen is Haley Z Boston. The unique storyline and style of SVBIGTH I believe can be attributed to Boston. But the Duffer Brothers are a suitable fit, for this is the upside down to the tradwife imaginary of marriage. Peeling back the white veil to reveal a sinister inside. The IMBD tagline reads, “A certain atmosphere of horror is felt the week before the celebration of an unfortunate wedding.” The miniseries orientates around the female protagonist and bride Rachel, played wonderfully by Camila Morrone. Her performance is excellent. Rachel is a not a traditional bride and early on she expresses discomfort at the proposition of becoming a mother as well as a wife. Born in 1997, Morrone straddles the millennial and Gen Z divide, whether on purpose or accidental this is evident in her character. Rachel has the cynicism and progressive tendencies of millennials but the longing for true love and stability of Gen Z. She is a cool and likeable character. I was routing for her from the very beginning. She and her fiancé Nicky, played by Adam DiMarco, are desperately in love and the series opens with them travelling to Nicky’s family cabin where their wedding is set to take place. The chemistry between the fiancés is burning hot, but the feeling of impending doom engulfs any excitement about their coming nuptials. There is lack of dramatic irony, only a flash forward to a bloody wedding scene but all the audience is privy to is as the title suggests, something very bad is going to happen.
Spoilers from here on, you’ve been warned.
As the days tick on, the unfolding unease leads Rachel to uncover a horrifying dilemma that is responsible for her own mother’s death. A generational curse that has haunted her matriarchal lineage for decades. By proposing Nicky cursed Rachel. She can only survive her wedding day if Nicky is her soulmate, and if he isn’t, she will die a tortuous death. If Rachel chooses not to marry Nicky, then she will pass the curse onto his family. To avoid both bloody outcomes Rachel tries to convince herself Nicky is her soulmate but as she does the cracks in their relationship start to widen.
There is a commonly quoted statistic that in heterosexual relationships married women live shorter lives than single women and this is reversed for men. Suggesting by marrying women men benefit whereas women decrease their life expectancy by marrying men. Sure, this is a generalisation but the ways in which it is accepted as factual is enough to give it merit. Rachel’s willingness to risk her own life by becoming Nicky’s wife makes a nightmare out of this statistic. Sacrificing herself for her groom and the very ideals of marrying your soulmate. In actuality there is no sure-fire way of knowing if someone is your soulmate, it is constant commitment to that person, to the idea of “the one.” By turning this commitment into a life or death decision SVBIGTH turns the idealisation of weddings and the institution of marriage on its head. It subtly and cleverly asks, what if marriage curses women?
Meeting the family is a rite of passage for any adult relationship. After equally chilling encounters with Nicky’s sister, brother, mother and father, Rachel is ill at ease in their company. The vibes are off. So off that Rachel becomes convinced they are trying to kill her. Her fears are pushed aside when the matriarch, Nicky’s mother Victoria, reveals she is dying. Not until the final act is it confirmed that Rachel’s suspicions weren’t completely unfounded. That marriage does not guarantee entry into the family unite. What’s that saying? Last one in, first one out. Slowly it unfolds Nicky’s idolisation of his parent’s marriage, and his mother in particular, is naïve and kind of disturbed. His whole worldview unravels at the revelation that his mother loved another man. He feels betrayed. Despite the years of devotion to Nicky’s father the curse kills Victoria and Nicky’s sister, Portia too. Only the patriarchs survive.
With the rise of the far right, the tradwife narrative that marriage is righteousness has culture in a chokehold. Content creators disguised as housewives gloss over the harmful implications of an imbalanced marriage with flour, butter and salt. Gender inequality proving under a gingham tea towel. This nostalgic make-believe is having an impact. Young people are being drawn towards conservativism. My own social media is awash with wedding content. Women online who post about their relationship are subject to comments asking why their boyfriend hasn’t proposed yet? “Four years and still no proposal?” This is why Something Very Bad is Going to Happen is the perfect (and arguably necessary) horror for our contemporary moment. Early on Rachel receives a wedding invitation addressed to her with the words “Don’t Marry Him” sinisterly sprawled across it. A warning, a lifeline. But the curse had rid Rachel of any autonomy, and we also learn Nicky had too. He had known Rachel didn’t want to get married but proposed anyway. Unleashing the curse. Turns out Nicky is not the nice guy he believes himself to be. He lied to Rachel from the very beginning to become the person she could love. He is the villain. Unfortunately Rachel learns this too late. And perhaps this is the most unsettling part of the story, that you might not truly know the person you’re marrying. That both of you are just playing a role to make the marriage work and that’s the real curse.
Photo by Arleth Méndez on Unsplash