Hemlock Grove

[joebronx 16]

Granted, not a movie, but I'm four episodes deep on the new Netflix series and it feels like this show was made by film students who have seen nothing but HDTGM movies. It's crazy. It makes no sense. Weird stuff happens. Then awesome stuff happens. Eyeballs fall out. And nothing comes close to adding up. If they ever spend an hour talking about a TV show, it has to be the first (and please God only) season of Hemlock Grove. It's like someone threw Twilight, True Blood, Twin Peaks and Gigli in a blender, filtered out any good elements of those things and then served it to you. In a toilet.

 

Word.

[sillstaw 414]

The AV Club gave it an F. All of it. They call it misogynistic trash that's too full of dead spots to be campy fun. Which... wow.

 

I guess that's what happens when you let Eli Roth have a series.

[BagguhMcGuirk 104]

I watched the first three episodes and I have to agree it's pretty bad. Besides the writing which is comically bad at times, the acting is so bad it's really mind boggling. One of the things that annoyed the shit out of me from the start was Famke Jansen's accent, it reminded me of Hans Gruber's from "Judas Kiss" or more recently that woman from Boondock Saints 2.

 

Since this cost 45 million I really hope Netflix will be a little more discerning going forward in terms of original programming, although I remember reading how they've recently signed a deal with the Wachowskis for a sci-fi series. How ever much it ends up costing, which I could easily imagine being more than 45, the Wachowski's wouldn't be my first choice to make a show mainstream enough to bring in subscribers.

 

If they're given complete creative control, which I'm guessing would be one reason they'd want to work with Netflix, then this could end up being an even bigger train wreck than Hemlock Grove.

[joebronx 16]

The AV Club gave it an F. All of it. They call it misogynistic trash that's too full of dead spots to be campy fun. Which... wow.

 

I guess that's what happens when you let Eli Roth have a series.

 

Although I didn't expect much when I saw Eli Roth's name in the credits, I will say it's an entirely different kind of bad than I anticipated. It's like a psychedelic fever dream with terrible acting. In his review of Punisher: War Zone, Roger Ebert made the point that we've reached a time when bad movies can be well made. Hemlock Grove is a tremendously well-crafted horrible thing.

 

I'm still trying to figure out how it got a B+ from Entertainment Weekly.

 

In spite of my criticism I do find it strange that the AV Club called it "misogynistic." Because that suggests this series effectively communicated misogyny to someone, and I'm baffled as to how this show could possibly have communicated any sort of ethos to anyone. Every single character on this show is a cipher. I'd say 75 percent of the conversations don't make sense. Not only within the context of the show, but within the context of the conversations themselves.

 

Most dialogue plays out something like this:

 

CHARACTER A "I hate you."

CHARACTER B "I hate you. And I want nothing to do with you. We are mortal enemies."

CHARACTER A "Need a ride home?"

CHARACTER B: "Yes. I have a secret super power, but I don't like walking and we live fairly close to each other."

CHARACTER A: "I want to see you turn into a werewolf."

CHARACTER B: "No problem."

 

Word.

[sillstaw 414]

In spite of my criticism I do find it strange that the AV Club called it "misogynistic." Because that suggests this series effectively communicated misogyny to someone, and I'm baffled as to how this show could possibly have communicated any sort of ethos to anyone. Every single character on this show is a cipher. I'd say 75 percent of the conversations don't make sense. Not only within the context of the show, but within the context of the conversations themselves.

 

It's from the fact that the series apparently kills off every young woman who even thinks of having sex, and lingers on their corpses, then completely forgets about them.

 

Most dialogue plays out something like this:

 

CHARACTER A "I hate you."

CHARACTER B "I hate you. And I want nothing to do with you. We are mortal enemies."

CHARACTER A "Need a ride home?"

CHARACTER B: "Yes. I have a secret super power, but I don't like walking and we live fairly close to each other."

CHARACTER A: "I want to see you turn into a werewolf."

CHARACTER B: "No problem."

 

Add in extraneous "fucks" and "cunts" and you've got it.

[RichardsCopyCat 22]

Am I supposed to like a guy who goes to prostitutes, rapes his friends and kills his mother just because he's hunting a killer for his own personnal glory and seems to like his little sister?

 

HOWEVER, I did like the music in this show... and the fact that I could watch it all the way through.

 

That being said, I don't think this is really good material for HDTGM.

[jarrycanada 2483]

better or worse then Zombieland the series. ?

[choochoo_the_wonder_slut 740]

Doubtful.

 

[imhatch 271]

lol did not realize this was An Eli Roth Thing

[joebronx 16]

Doubtful.

 

 

Nonetheless, Paul did call it a "contender" (I think that's the word he used) on this week's prequel episode. Seeing this picture I hope that Roth comes in for a directors cut and explains to me what the hell is going on in this show.

 

Word.

[joebronx 16]

better or worse then Zombieland the series. ?

 

Despite the fact that I have not seen the Zombieland series, I will say Hemlock Grove.

 

Word.

[joebronx 16]

Am I supposed to like a guy who goes to prostitutes, rapes his friends and kills his mother just because he's hunting a killer for his own personnal glory and seems to like his little sister?

 

HOWEVER, I did like the music in this show... and the fact that I could watch it all the way through.

 

That being said, I don't think this is really good material for HDTGM.

 

Wow, yes, the main character of this show is a stone-cold rapist. When we the reach the resolution of his Season 1 arc, I have no idea whether we're supposed to feel like a good or a bad thing has happened. But if I'm supposed to feel like the character has triumphed, then I guess I feel bad about that, because he just goes around raping girls and no one cares.

 

Interesting that you say this isn't good material for HDTGM. Generally when I watch something and think, "What the hell is going on?" more than six times per second, I figure that's a solid HDTGM candidate. When a werewolf eats vaginas (literally), a child cuts off her own tail (which she has for reasons that go entirely unexplained), a werewolf eats its own discarded human flesh, people from Europe speak with inconsistently accurate American accents, and a boat-load of incest happens all over the place and none of this happens with a remote hint of a care about anything adding up, then I'm typically surprised HDTGM hasn't done it already.

 

Also, after completing the first season, yes this is quite misogynistic and also has unresolved gay sexual tension between the two lead characters. And the craziness of Hemlock Grove goes on and on. My head wants to explode.

 

Word.

[imhatch 271]

 

Nonetheless, Paul did call it a "contender" (I think that's the word he used) on this week's prequel episode. Seeing this picture I hope that Roth comes in for a directors cut and explains to me what the hell is going on in this show.

 

Word.

whenever someone involved in the production is on the show the episodes tend to be (understandably) pretty toothless with the guest treated as someone who was along for a ride, not responsible for it. if there was an episode on hemlock grove it would probably be immensely more interesting if eli roth was not a guest, honestly.

[Wien 401]

This show is BAD. Some of the worst writing I've ever seen, and I'm counting The Room and Birdemic in there, too. I STRUGGLED to make it through 2 and a half episodes of this terrible show.

 

 

What have they done to my lovely Famke Janssen.....

[Wien 401]

Seriously, when watching this bullshit, watch it with the Subtitles turned on so you can SEE and READ the bullshit they are saying. Its, to use a 'zoukism, Next Level Bonkers. Especially when there is music with lyrics.

 

Its like the show was written by ESL foreigners through Google translate.

[BagguhMcGuirk 104]

What have they done to my lovely Famke Janssen.....

 

Somebody really should have said something to her about that accent. I'd imagine it would be pretty difficult to tell whether or not a foreign accent sounds good or not, and if nobody says anything to you about it there'd be no reason to worry about it. But with how bad the writing/directing was I guess it's no surprise they allowed a very capable actress to look/sound as though she belonged on a soap opera.

[Wien 401]

 

Somebody really should have said something to her about that accent. I'd imagine it would be pretty difficult to tell whether or not a foreign accent sounds good or not, and if nobody says anything to you about it there'd be no reason to worry about it. But with how bad the writing/directing was I guess it's no surprise they allowed a very capable actress to look/sound as though she belonged on a soap opera.

 

Her accent is the WORST. Keanu Reeves does a more convincing southern accent in Devil's Advocate than she does an English one here. Its embarrassing. Whats worse, is all the dialog and narration in this is written to sound like that early 1900s HP Lovecraft effect. Kind of like this:

 

 

Only Garrick Hagon is awesome, HP Lovecraft is amazing, and everyone involved with Hemlock Grove deserves to be beaten with a cane by an angry Singaporean dungeon master. Maybe they should have set this in the UK and hired an all English cast.

[Wien 401]

And for fucks sake, every other thing one character says to another is desperately trying to be witty and fails. Hard.

[sillstaw 414]

And for fucks sake, every other thing one character says to another is desperately trying to be witty and fails. Hard.

 

The AV Club review I linked to basically turned the line "That woman is what she says she is like a Mexican hates fireworks" into a minor meme in the comments. Lines like that are astonishing usually because somebody wrote them, then someone else said them, and then someone else edited them in without anybody asking what the hell it meant. But, according to the comments, that line is verbatim from the book this show is based on. So somebody wrote it, several other people copy-edited it, someone else wrote it into a script, someone else said it and someone else edited it in without anybody saying, "Wait, what now?"

[Wien 401]

 

The AV Club review I linked to basically turned the line "That woman is what she says she is like a Mexican hates fireworks" into a minor meme in the comments. Lines like that are astonishing usually because somebody wrote them, then someone else said them, and then someone else edited them in without anybody asking what the hell it meant. But, according to the comments, that line is verbatim from the book this show is based on. So somebody wrote it, several other people copy-edited it, someone else wrote it into a script, someone else said it and someone else edited it in without anybody saying, "Wait, what now?"

 

So when the mother says to her son "I hope those balls know what they're doing", was that also written in this book? If so, we found someone worse than Stephanie Meyer.

[EarBear 460]

 

...worse than Stephanie Meyer.

 

*shudders*

[EarBear 460]

Netflix is, to some extent, figuring out their business model. They are making a shitload of money, now officially a billion dollar company with more subscribers than HBO. That said, there are sectors of the tech investor community that have been hesitant to get behind them, mainly due to hidden payout costs they could need to dole out to some content owners with certain contracts if their content hits big. To my knowledge, that hasn’t really happened yet. But they have fundamentals of their streaming audience down – chiefly, they know people like watching episodics more than movies. Even the movie industry knows that at this point – we’re all gonna see Fast and Furious 6 and/or Hangover 3 this summer. So if Netflix can pay a lump sum for the first season of a show that they get to stream exclusively and in perpetuity without incurring futures costs, it’s kind of a no brainer.

 

I am looking at ‘House of Cards’ vs. ‘Hemlock Grove’ as sort of a strategic feel out on Netflix’s part. Netflix was sort of dipping their tow in the water with ‘Lilyhammer’ – an in-offensive show that managed to entertain some existing subscribers while bringing a few new users on board. ‘House of Cards’, to echo the salient points of previous posters in this thread, seems to be a one prong of their next step. It’s well produced, the acting is pretty good, the writing is a hair above average, and it has curse words and the occasional boob. While they haven’t, to my knowledge, made their streaming figures public on it, they have ordered a second season. So they must feel that the investment on an exclusive, slick, thoughtful and adult show is worth it.

 

‘Hemlock Grove’ is the other prong, and one where our beloved HDTGM aligns with in a very unique way. I watched the first episode of ‘True Blood’ on HBO when it was broadcast. I thought it was awful and never watched it again. But it has gone on to have several seasons of devoted fanfare. ‘Hemlock Grove’ could be the Netflix attempt at a campy, adult horror soap. Netflix knows people stream quality entertainment, but they also provide a lot of crap. Several HDTGM featured movies have gotten bumps from all of us as companion piece watching, from Birdemic to In the Name of the King. I am a Netflix subscriber and have yet to invest in ‘Hemlock Grove’, mostly cause it seems like a pile and I don’t want to waste my time. But that’s the beauty of camp / crap – and the beauty of HDTGM. Crap is kind of awesome when you have people to rip on it with. The only way I’m gonna watch this show is if the crew of HDTGM does a few episodes on it. If I’m gonna partake in crap, I want to revel in its crappitude. Eli Roth seems like a smart dude, and he’s got a great sense of humor. I assume he knows they weren’t trying to make a ‘Sopranos’, or even ‘House of Cards’, and one of the best ways for his show to develop a following is to not just admit what it is, but revel in it.

[EarBear 460]

tl; dr - admitting something is camp and reveling it its 'what the fuck is happening' sensibility can go a long way to developing an audience.

[PhillipMedoc 648]

Is this show good/bad/weird/crazy like the first season of American Horror Story was? Because that was something I didn't think they were gonna pull off but they did, in the end.

 

Second season is another story, but the first was solid.

 

Good post, EarBear. Netflix is on top of their game; now if they could only figure out a user interface that's intuitive or actually fucking useful at all. It's absurd that I have to use the Instantwatcher app to find what I want to watch while I'm sitting on my couch staring at the Netflix screen.

[Wien 401]

Eli Roth seems like a smart dude, and he’s got a great sense of humor. I assume he knows they weren’t trying to make a ‘Sopranos’, or even ‘House of Cards’, and one of the best ways for his show to develop a following is to not just admit what it is, but revel in it.

 

 

Yeah, I don't think these guys had ANY intention of creating a campy soap. Not even in the slightest, according to this panel. Just a full blown fail.