ÜWe now know quite a bit about the abysses of teenage girls, also thanks to streaming services. But seldom have they been as blissfully black and gothically enjoyable as in the current Netflix hit “Wednesday”.
No wonder. Firstly, for the spin-off story devised by the “Smallville” inventors Alfred Gough and Miles Millar as a creative, horror-humorous twitching master brain (and director of the first half of the eight episodes), none other than the permanently bizarre Tim Burton is at the series stove for the first time – and of course he stays true to his necrophilic specialties.
Secondly, “Wednesday” is an update of the good old “Addams Family”, the American nuclear family with a clearly morbid touch, which – conceived by Charles Addams – has been bloodthirsty in multimedia in cartoons, TV series, films and musicals since 1938 and is on the road in love with death.
And thirdly, not even Disney has invented such a lovely little companion for its main heroine as the severed and only roughly sewn together (and of course mute) hand. Which is only called “Thing” in English, but in the German dubbing it has the much prettier opera aria name “Eiskaltes Händchen”.
She is (“played” in front of a green screen by a real Hand actor) as a mixture of a not-so-dead lapdog and a hasty, sometimes insubordinate, sometimes thinking assistant on the road with Wednesday. She, in turn, is the not-so-little Addams daughter, whose adolescence is the main focus this time.
Everyone wants to be like her: Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams
Quelle: VLAD CIOPLEA/© 2022 Netflix, Inc.
Of course, the sexy-vampire-like Mama Morticia (the pleasantly hip-waggling, sexy pale Catherine Zeta-Jones), the slightly goofy but also dangerous Latino father Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and the brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) on.
The grumpy servant Lurch drives Wednesday to the new school in an elegant hearse. And in episode six, there’s even a reunion with the dopey, treacherous Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen).
Although Burton has softened the originally evil humor of the Addams’ somewhat youthfully and made it more compatible with the masses, he loads the story with “Harry Potter”, Netflix’s own “Èlite” and mystery motifs.
A boarding school for vampires, werewolves, gorgons
Wednesday, who has just released murderous piranhas on her jealous classmates, is supposed to go to the Nevermore Academy boarding school, according to family tradition, where her parents were, got to know each other and got to know each other all the time. This is a sanctuary for all freaks and abnormals, werewolves, vampires, sirens, gorgons, impersonators. In Tim Burton styling and surrounded by Danny Elfman music.
Of course, the teenager defends himself, but the threat to the school from a monster, but also from the lurking residents of the nearby town of Jericho with descendants of witch-hunting Pilgrim Fathers, who now run a theme park, allows the stubborn, reserved, solitude-seeking Wednesday to surpass herself and more feel just a hint of empathy for the other students, even though she’s actually too weird for them. And she can even solve a naturally dark family secret.
The sheriff’s son and a weird classmate fall in love with the reluctant girl. Roommate Enid (Emma Myers), a werewolf as the pink-lilac Princess Lillifee, who to her parents’ displeasure has yet to discover the beast in her, wants her attention.
A therapist and the headmistress (Gwendoline Christie), who looks like Tippi Hedren, are annoying. And then there is Miss Thornhill, who comes from the normal people and knows everything about carnivorous plants: Behind thick glasses and a nasty mop of wigs is Christina Ricci of all people – who was Wednesday in the first Addams movie in 1991.
This results in a cynically bubbling poisonous cocktail of gothic comedy and horror, which is of course held together confidently by the angular, pouting obduracy of Jenna Ortega as Wednesday, who doesn’t want to let anyone get close to her, but of course has feelings and longings.
With Vivaldi against anger
Despite rat tail hairstyles, witch burnings that haunt them as visions and collateral deaths, their problems are the same as those of all adolescents. When she’s angry, she plays Vivaldi on the cello, rattling.
Even though Jenna nagged Ortega in the media about the shooting, her quirky dance to The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck” on the bloody-ending prom night alone, which of course quoted the teen shocker “Carrie,” went viral.
And not only little TikTok girls apparently would love to be the “little deathtrap” and staring, always bad-tempered autistic Wednesday Addams. Because “Wednesday” is now the most-streamed Netflix series in 83 countries.