7 min readThe following story contains spoilers through the end of Netflix's Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.
HORROR TELEVISION CAN be hard to pull off. A major reason for that is it's often difficult to sustain the feelings fans of the genre seek—genuine terror, dread, and a sinking feeling that something awful is around the corner—over the course of multiple episodes (if not multiple seasons). These are things generally most effective in small doses, deployed selectively and strategically for maximum effect.
In recent years, people like Mike Flanagan have managed to find success in the limited series format, and shows like Twin Peaks stand the test of time for good reason. But generally speaking, there just aren't even that many attempts to make a great horror show, because it can just be so tricky to find the perfect recipe for a worthy payoff (For the record, though,Men's Health rounded up the best horror shows of all time a couple years ago, and we stand by that list).
Netflix's Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, however, was not only up for the challenge—it managed to completely succeed. The show, which comes from creator Haley Z. Boston (who previously worked on Netflix's underrated surreal horror series Brand New Cherry Flavor), tells you right up front what it's all about. That's right: Something very bad, is, indeed, going to happen. That title—which the show playfully, ominously, and darkly hilariously flashes across the screen at choice moments throughout the course of its eight episodes—is just the beginning. Thanks to the show's cinematic look and slow, movement-filled camera work, you get the sense very quickly that something is lurking for us.
The show's plot is simple enough. Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco) are set to get married in less than a week, and for the occasion, they're going to Nicky's wealthy family home, where Rachel will be de facto inducted into their rich and fancy bloodline. Par for the course with the genre, Nicky's parents (played by the great Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ted Levine) are a little strange, and the rest of the family isn't much more accepting from the jump. But it becomes clear before long that this show isn't your normal tale of a family with something to hide.
In fact, over the course of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, we learn that the aforementioned very bad thing isn't coming from Nicky's side of the family at all, but rather Rachel's. Through an extended flashback featuring a video recording of Rachel's mother (played by modern horror icon Victoria Pedretti) and a conversation with a very creepy man known only as "The Witness" (Zlatko Burić), we learn the truth of what's going on—Rachel's family is cursed, and has been for a very, very, very long time. And if she doesn't play her cards right, well, you guessed it: Something very bad is going to happen.
The show slow plays this simple premise throughout the course of its episodes, but it's never uninteresting, and there's always something more to be learned about our characters, always something interesting, striking, or horrifying happening on screen, and always something that we don't see coming happening right around the corner. That includes pinky toe amputations; It includes terminal illness; It includes realizing that many of our striking long camera shots are actually from the point-of-view of an unnamed evil force. That's what we're playing with in this show.
But, ultimately, all of this is in service of building toward Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen's show-stopping final episode, a bloody, horrifying, and slightly mistifying barn-burner of a conclusion. It's the kind of satisfying ending that a story like this truly needs to fully work, and luckily, it arrives and does not disappoint. But this is a dense series with a lot of details worth remembering. So, in case if something is not quite tracking, don't worry—we've got you covered.
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So, what, exactly, is the curse in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?
While Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen opens with Rachel having the sneaking suspicion and undying sense of dread that something awful is around the corner, it doesn't become a fully real thing for her until she sees the video of her mother and discovers what happened to her on her wedding night. In the video, she sees her mother bleeding from her eyes and ears, and, since she was pregnant, her father saving her life as an infant. This, we learn, is what Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) saw as a kid and mistook for a creepy serial murderer called "The Sorry Man"—it was Rachel's father bringing her into the world, cutting her out of the dying body of her mother. Dark stuff!
Rachel then returns to the dive bar, where The Witness, whom she had previously run into and who is a very weird guy (and a dickhead himself!), tells her the whole deal. His family, it turns out, is cursed. Everyone in his bloodline needs to do something very specific to keep the curse away: Marry their soulmate by sundown on their wedding day. If they never have a wedding day, no problemo. But if there's a wedding day, they need to be marrying their soulmate. And the soulmate proposition is simply settled by the person being 100% sure, without any shadow of a doubt, that they are marrying the right person and making the right choice. It's the kind of thing you can't fake and can't force. You just have to be making the right choice.
The Witness knows this because he was once set to be married, and instead he left his bride-to-be at the altar. When this happens, the curse spreads to her family—and he becomes immortal, left to witness every wedding in her family for the rest of time, hoping they make the right choice and marry their soulmate. His bride-to-be's family turned out to be Rachel's family; We learn this because in Rachel's mother's video, we hear his voice asking her the same question he asked Rachel at the dive bar. "Are you sure he is the one?" he asks.
Rachel knows this, understands this, and accepts this. She is cursed, she can't get out of it, and she needs to make the right choice. If not, either she will die, or the curse will spread to Nicky's entire bloodline. And that brings us to the bloody finale of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.
Why did all those people die in the Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen finale?
In the final episode of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, Rachel is feeling good. She's ready to marry Nicky, and she even trusts her intuition that he's the right one, choosing not to drink some weird potion that would guarantee a soulmate match but fundamentally change her as a person at her core. Nicky, however, is playing a different game. He tries to call the wedding off at the last second, citing Rachel's earlier desires to never get married. They run off to work things out, and, ultimately, this dooms everyone and everything.
During their heated argument, Nicky admits that he never believed that Rachel and her family were actually cursed. There's a lot of back-and-forth arguments in this sequence, but this is the one that is truly a back-breaker. Rachel realizes that Nicky is not the one for her, he never believed her, and there's really no coming back from this. When he finally asks her to give it another shot and she declines, the curse begins to take effect. Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) immediately starts to bleed from her face, as do what seem like tens of other guests at the wedding. This indicates that these people all do not believe they are married to their actual soulmate. The curse knows this, and takes them. Portia (Gus Birney), who had been kind of secretly married in a Las Vegas situation, is among the surprise deaths due to the curse.
A few notable survivors: Nicky, who believed Rachel was his soulmate. Jules, who despite his constant bickering with his wife Nell (Karla Crome), believed in her as his true soulmate as well. And Boris (Ted Levine), who, despite clear issues with Victoria, believed her as his soulmate. Nell also was spared, but this isn't necessarily because Jules was her soulmate; She's just not part of the family bloodline.
Why did Rachel come back to life and become the witness?
Despite a very dramatic (and, again, very, very bloody) death scene in her wedding dress (the family forced her to marry Nicky, having already said her "I Do," and now knowing he’s definitely not her soulmate, she died), Rachel comes back to life the next morning. While initially it's a bit confusing as to what's happening, it's because Rachel is taking the role of the new immortal witness, meant to see the curse out for the next however many hundred years. We see the camera POV evil force finally put The Witness out of his misery (although, honestly, he kind of seemed to be having a good bit of fun with it), and Rachel returns to life, now immortal, taking his place.
This is because, like The Witness, Rachel is the reason this curse has spread to an entirely new bloodline. As a result, she will now be the person who needs to see this out going forward. As she tells Jules and Nell's son Jude (Sawyer Fraser), he needs to be very careful who he marries. But she'll be there no matter what, so he won't be alone.
And so ends Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen with a lot of blood, a lot of bodies, and a strong message: Don't waste your time on bad relationships, because you might end up cursed and bleeding to death from every orifice on your body.
