PLOT: After a dance-team initiation gone wrong, a group of badly behaved Catholic school girls begin having prophetic visions that set off mass hysteria in their town.
REVIEW: While the 1980s were the mainstay of the so-called Satanic Panic that swept America, fear and paranoia associated with religious zealots have existed before and after. The new seriesThe Body blends elements of that era of anxiety and fear with similar concerns related to teen sexuality and drug use in the late 1990s. Created by Quinn Shepard, The Body uses a Catholic high school setting to tell a story that combines elements of the cult classic film Heathers with the mentality of Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero. A story that starts out as a mistake slowly snowballs into something much larger and more complex, threatening to take down an entire community. A melodrama that will appeal to fans of shows like Pretty Little Liars, but with a bit more bite, The Body is a guilty pleasure wrapped in a much more sinister story about the perils of groupthink and the true capability of even the most innocent teenager.
The Body centers on a Catholic high school in an affluent neighborhood at the turn of the millennium. The school is at the mercy of a group of mean girls who comprise the varsity dance team, The Lions. Led by best friends Anya Butler (Kristina Bogic) and Elise Zakaria (Sara Boustany), the team is recruiting a new member, with the choice coming down to Grace Franklin (Sofia Wylie), the niece of school principal Father Franklin (Nnamdi Asomugha), and Lisbeth Anderson (Geena Meszaros). Lisbeth and her brother, Leo (Jackson Kelly), are treated as strange because they are scholarship students who are less wealthy than their classmates. In addition, Leo and Lisbeth were raised in a radical religious sect and were homeschooled. When Lisbeth and Leo attend a Halloween party at an abandoned building known as Devil’s House, where Grace is initiated into the Lions, drugs play a part in a tragic event that turns into a cover-up and a secret. At first, hiding the truth impacts the girls emotionally and psychologically before the visions begin.
If you’ve seen the trailer for The Body, it is marketed as being something closer to the horror genre than it actually is. There are some truly horrific moments in this series, and some dark, psychologically impactful elements, but this is much more of a thriller than horror. The close-knit team begins to fray at the edges as the girls contend with the secret they’re trying to keep, with some of whom know more than they’re letting on. But as the larger community begins to form its own theories about what’s actually happening, it creates a fervent divide between those who believe in something truly spiritual happening and those who believe it may be something a lot more underhanded. Being an eight-episode series, there are, of course, misdirections and red herrings along the way to keep you wondering as to who knows what, but the truly disturbing part of The Body is how many people begin to truly think they know something, even though it’s completely fictional. The lies begin to pile up, and who is being honest becomes secondary to who has the most to gain and lose.
Many teen-centric shows like this often treat the adults as secondary and sometimes underwrite them, but here the adult characters are vital, especially Father Franklin and Catherine Anderson. Nnamdi Asomugha plays Father Franklin, a devout priest who must balance his faith with what he learns that the girls under his tutelage are capable of. Louisa Krause portrays Catherine Anderson as reminiscent of Carrie White‘s maniacal mother, but without turning her very different but no less devout faith into something evil. The balance of truth versus lies and good versus evil blurs throughout these eight chapters, with the series building towards revelations that could set the table for an even more decadent second season should the story continue for a sophomore run. Kristina Bogic and Sara Boustany are excellent as best friends divided by their lies, while Geena Meszaros plays Lisbeth as a catalyst who orchestrates and participates as a surrogate cult leader. The other members of the ensemble, including Shirley Chen, Kyra Pierce, Phallon Pierce, Marcel Ruiz, and Orlando Norman, are all good, adding to the wave of paranoia that sweeps through the student body.
Created by Quinn Shephard, developer of the limited series Under the Bridge and the 2017 film Blame, The Body incorporates many storylines typically not covered in shows made in 1999 and the early 2000s. The pop culture references and soundtrack alone filled me with nostalgia for the end of high school and the start of college, including good old flip phones and texting using a physical keypad. By setting this series twenty-five years in the past, The Body is able to see the cancerous power of gossip, even in the pre-social-media days. Shephard directed four episodes, including the first two and the finale, with Kevin Phillips and Gina Gammell helming the remaining four chapters. Shephard also wrote the opening two with Stuti Malhotra, Julian Breece, Catherine Schetina, Lily Houghton, Greta Heineman, and Naledi Jackson scripting the remaining episodes. The series tackles some somewhat taboo subjects from the period in which it takes place, namely same-sex relationships and bullying within the high school environment. Many of these are subjects and topics that have become commonplace today, but seeing how they were viewed at the turn of the millennium creates an additional layer of complexity to the story being told. I don’t agree with a lot of what these characters decide to do, as they just compound their situation with each subsequent bad decision, but it never detracts from the investment in the story.
As far as teen shows go, The Body is better than many we’ve gotten in recent years, thanks to solid performances and a retro 1999 setting. The story feels ready to pivot into a totally different direction in the finale, leading to what could be a vastly different series should it come back for season two. That all depends on whether audiences will invest in what this series has in store. Going in without knowing much more than what the trailer reveals makes it something easier to get lost in. I had a good time with the show, even if some of the decisions began to frustrate me at the halfway mark. Still, The Body has a cast of up-and-coming talent that are all impressive. Creator Quinn Shephard has crafted a story rooted in the horror and thriller genres but manages to deliver something unique to what we’ve seen in the past. Using religious hysteria as a plot device here, it works in favor of a story full of sex, drugs, and supernatural events infecting an entire community. A solid series that deserves to find an audience.
The Body is now streaming on Netflix.