Mike Flanagan‘s The Haunting of Hill House is easily one of Netflix’s greatest horror shows of all time, but another one-season series is no less incredible. In the late 2010s and the 2020s, Netflix experienced a golden age of horror TV when Mike Flanagan churned out one great horror show after another. During the same era, Netflix also added an eight-episode horror series that still boasts a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
While Mike Flanagan’s Netflix horror shows have incredible rewatch value and are still celebrated as some of the best additions to the horror genre, the Netflix horror show in question, titled Marianne, remains relatively obscure. Created and directed by Samuel Bodin and written by Bodin and Quoc Dang Tran, Marianne is originally a French language series that unfolds in the countryside of France.
It focuses on a writer who returns to her hometown in the hope of finding new creative inspiration. To her shock, though, things soon take a grim turn when she encounters an evil force that once haunted her through her dreams. As simple as Marianne‘s story may sound, the show is packed with chills and thrills that stay with viewers long after its credits start rolling.
Like Mike Flanagan’s Hill House, Marianne Is One Of Netflix’s Best Horror Shows
Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House effectively uses its terrors to draw metaphors for grief and a family’s broken relationships. By the time the show’s credits start rolling, it is hard not to see how some of its scariest aspects had a layer of humanity to them. Netflix’s Marianne does not take the same approach and still succeeds.
From the very beginning, Marianne bypasses the slow-burning, melancholy of shows like The Haunting of Hill House and unfolds a story that feels mean and sinister. What makes it even more nightmare-inducing is Mireille Herbstmeyer performance as Madame Daugeron. The actress’ portrayal of the character is so convincing that every scene involving her carries an unforgettable sense of dread.
The show is further elevated by its unflinching and non-human portrayal of its central witch character. While the series gives a glimpse of her past from the witch trials, her evil is so pure and uncompromising that it becomes hard to empathize with her in any way. Beyond its terrors, the show also follows a fixed set of magic rules and stays consistent with its internal logic almost throughout its runtime.
The protagonist, Emma (Victoire Du Bois), is also nothing like the rootable characters from Mike Flanagan’s shows. She is far more cynical and anti-heroic than your regular fare of main characters and crosses many a moral boundary. Even when it purely comes to scares, some of the best ones in the show unfold as long and slow sequences that gradually set the stage for deeply unsettling payoffs.
Given how Marianne seems to belong to a completely different brand of folk horror, it would be unfair to compare it with Mike Flanagan’s movies and shows. However, in terms of sheer quality, it undoubtedly ranks among Netflix’s best horror shows with Mike Flanagan’s creations.
Marianne Did Not Deserve To Be Canceled After 1 Season
Marianne season 1 ends with a massive cliffhanger that paves the way for the series to continue its story for at least one more installment. Even with its villains, the show hinted at an overarching hierarchy, which would have allowed it to introduce new antagonists in future seasons. In more ways than one, its lore was only starting to open up in season 1.
Unfortunately, despite having more stories to tell, Marianne was canceled after just one season. Stephen King, too, approved the series in his Twitter review and even compared it with Stranger Things and his own works:
“If you’re one of those sickos–like me–who enjoys being scared, MARIANNE (Netflix) will do the job. There are glints of humor that give it a STRANGER THINGS vibe. It also has (I say it with all due modesty) a Stephen King vibe.”
Despite earning a rave review from the King of Horror himself, horror, Marianne remained in Netflix’s overcrowded graveyard of prematurely canceled genre gems. After all these years, it almost seems impossible that Marianne will ever get a second chance. Fans of horror can still check out its first season, which, in itself, tells a complete and disturbing story like Mike Flanagan‘s The Haunting of Hill House.
