With just one day to go until Halloween, now is the perfect time to start binging one of the spookiest TV series out there, that viewers are branding ‘perfect’.
Marianne landed on Netflix in 2019 and has a rating of 15 and over, so we know it’s not one for the faint-hearted.
It follows a famous writer lured back to her hometown, who discovers that the evil spirit plaguing her nightmares is actually causing destruction in real life.
The French horror series stars Victoire Du Bois as Emma Larsimon, who has been haunted by her dreams since childhood and puts her own fears to paper by selling stories of her character Lizzie Larck fighting a demon named Marianne.
When Emma goes back to her hometown after one of her friends dies by suicide in front of her and she fears her mother has become possessed by Marianne, the author begins writing again, only to find her stories turn into truth the next day.
Despite it being one of the scariest shows ever, critics have hailed it as ‘a perfect recommendation for any horror fan’.
The series has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score and an impressive 85% audience review score, with Touissant Egan saying in a review: ‘With a decidedly Stephen King-esque inspired premise that feels like a combination of It and Misery and viscerally unsettling visuals edited with hair-raising precision, Marianne is a perfect recommendation for any horror fan.’
TV Guide’s Tim Surette said: ‘The eight episodes of Marianne are all perfectly equipped to chop lesser horror shows up into little bits and keep you up all night. Give it a watch; you can curse me later.’
‘Compelling, mysterious and, above all, creepy as hell, you almost can’t stop watching Marianne once you start,’ Kylie Klein-Nixon wrote.
‘Marianne is a series that embodies classic horror while simultaneously adding its own unique style. It’s terrifying- and somehow manages to be loads of fun,’ Chauncey K. Robinson added.
Audiences were just as hooked, with @ilovemusic555 writing: ‘A memorizing masterpiece. I’m speechless and blown away. Just wow.’
‘Best horror TV series. Change my mind, I dare you,’ an anonymous viewer said, with another writing: ‘Atmosperic, scary, great music. One of the best horror tv series!’
@FreddyInSpace said: ‘Marianne is gripping television. Creepy, charming & emotional. The more information it reveals, the more interesting it becomes. And it has one thing most horror films & shows would kill for: one hell of a main character. Victoire Du Bois is sensational. Please renew, Netflix.’
The eight-part series ends with the revelation that Emma was possessed by Marianne herself before an exorcism as they discover the true Marianne’s grave.
Though the final scenes left plenty open for a possible season two, with Emma realising she’s pregnant and was possibly impregnated by the demonic spirit, the horror series was axed by Netflix, with showrunner Samuel Bodin previously confirming: ‘There won’t be a second season for MARIANNE.
‘We are very sorry and sad about that. But we will see you in other stories…’
He told Bloody Disgusting about plans for a second season before it was axed, saying: ‘For the second season, we really wanted to talk about love. Because in the first season, Emma tells herself that she’s in love. But she’s not in love. It was the idea of love in her head.
‘In the second season, we wanted her to really fall in love. She would really fall in love with an older woman – a very classy, sophisticated novelist.’
He went on: ‘Also, the story of the second season is about what mistakes you can make when you really fall in love. This woman will use her in a diabolical, evil way.’
Speaking about the pregnancy arc, Bodlin continued: ‘For us, the second season starts with Emma, nine months after the end of the first season. Emma is not pregnant.
‘She has a normal belly. In her bathroom, there are a lot of pregnancy tests – all negatives. At the end of the first season, the test was positive. But after this one, there has not been another positive test, they are all negative. So maybe, she thinks, it was all in her head.
‘During the first episode, she sleeps with a guy during a party. At this point, at the end of the first episode when she’s making love with this guy, her belly begins to grow, taking the shape of a pregnant, nine month belly.’
He added: ‘The baby, in a way, is Marianne’s baby. So Marianne haunts Emma, and follows her, saying “No, don’t hurt my baby.”
‘The whole thing about what women can do with their bodies, the liberties they have, the violence they have been subjected to for ages. It was all of this, and adoption…it would be very complicated, but we really wanted to ask those questions.
‘We really wanted Marianne to be a feminist show, and those questions are very important for us.’
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