‘I starred in The White Lotus – the twist in my Netflix horror is genius’
*Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen spoilers ahead*
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen might be an unsettling watch, but it’s already a Netflix hit, riding high at the top of the streamer’s ranking of its own content.
With the producing powers of the Duffer brothers and starring Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco, the nuptials horror manages to sustain the ratcheted-up tension of that title through its eight-part run, culminating in one gruesome wedding at a remote country home.
DiMarco, who plays one half of the engaged couple, told Metro that even he was creeped out while filming the show, particularly when Ted Levine’s character (mild spoiler!) peels back fur from the carcass of a dead dog, for taxidermy purposes.
‘That got me. I was like, this is real, this isn’t a prop,’ said DiMarco. ‘That kind of stuff freaked me out. I’m not great with body horror or gore. I prefer a psychological thriller.’
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And yet he signed on to this horror and gore-forward show. Despite what it might look like on the screen, DiMarco assured us they did have fun filming, even with everything that comes with horror: days upon days of night shoots and plentiful fake blood (those who have watched the finale will know), which brings its own lengthy clean-up job.
‘But the juice is worth the squeeze at the end of the day, especially when it turns out like this,’ said DiMarco.
You likely recognised the 35-year-old Canadian actor from the sumptuous Sicily edition of The White Lotus, where he played hopeless romantic Albie. His character here, Nicky, isn’t quite a replica, but certain aspects in the Venn diagram overlap, as DiMarco acknowledged in our interview.
‘I did want to create a little distinction,’ said DiMarco, speaking to us from New York. ‘I feel like Albie was a lover, and then Nicky’s more of a lover and a fighter.’
DiMarco admitted some of Nicky’s decisions leading up to the wedding are…questionable. But part of his job is to excuse that.
‘You kind of have to be your character’s lawyer,’ he said. ‘You have to be able to defend them in their day in court. So I had to sympathise with his choices, even if on a first read, I was like, man, what are you doing?’
As we delved into the show’s tangle of twists (strong spoiler warning here), DiMarco confessed he fell for a couple of them himself.
The Sorry Man, who haunts the woods around the cabin, and local serial killer Larry Poole, who used his custard empire as a cover for his crimes, are both named-checked in the first episode.
DiMarco thought either of them would be the show’s Big Bad. That was before the mid-season twist, where we flash back via found footage to Rachel’s (Morrone) traumatic, bloody birth.
‘It turns everything on its head,’ said DiMarco. ‘I felt like the pedal was hit to the floor at that moment. I just couldn’t wait to see where it went. It’s two pretty great misdirects by Haley [Z Boston, the show’s creator].
The Sorry Man lore is teed up by Nicky’s unhinged family, with a monologue DiMarco had doubts the show would be able to justify, until the flashback explains how that mythology came to be.
‘It really makes total sense, which was crazy. When I was reading that, I was like, “Oh this is genius”.’
What the show is actually about is a hereditary curse, which poses its own quandary to the audience: when you get married, how sure can you be that the other person at the altar is actually ‘the one’?
DiMarco and Morrone did much behind the scenes to obscure the answer in viewers’ minds. They mapped out their characters’ relationship history together and added their own moments of physical intimacy to the performance.
Metro’s thoughts on Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen
Read the full four-star review here.
Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco deliver solid performances, managing plenty of claustrophobic close-ups that would expose lesser actors. They’re wholly believable as a loved-up couple, as well as one questioning whether they’re right for each other.
Unfortunately, that first episode’s tightly-pulled tension isn’t quite maintained through the eight-part run, as Nicky and Rachel’s classic wedding jitters turn into full-blown heebie-jeebies.
The next best bit comes in the fourth episode, when all your expectations about the Sorry Man are gruesomely upended. The standout of Netflix’s You, Victoria Pedretti, makes a welcome appearance, with as good a face for horror as you’re going to get.
SVBIGTH delivers on that titular promise and ends in a blood-soaked fever, which plays out like a panic attack.
‘I think you can express a lot about a couple and their dynamic non-verbally,’ said DiMarco. ‘Just body language and the energy they have between each other.
‘I think we got pretty lucky that we just had something pretty natural immediately there.’
Much of the filming is done in tight close-ups on the actors’ faces, in part to exacerbate that claustrophobic, hair-raising feeling the show trades in. Even as the camera created a literal barrier between DiMarco and Morrone, they found a workaround to be together in scenes.
‘Cami and I would try to extend a hand underneath and we would squeeze each other, just to know there’s something physically connecting you to the other,’ recalled DiMarco. ‘Because there’s nothing to react to if there’s a big camera. Acting is reacting. That’s the classic expression.’
DiMarco and Morrone make a convincing case that they are indeed soulmates. But when your death is on the line, how sure can you be?
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is available to stream on Netflix.
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