This was published 1 year ago
Tim Burton’s gothic Addams Family spin-off is gorgeous
Wednesday ★★★★
Gothic horror director Tim Burton and The Addams Family are such an obvious pairing it’s surprising it has taken this long – but for fans of both, Wednesday is worth the wait.
It’s hard not to compare this with the excellent 1990s live-action films. But being an eight-part series it is, by necessity, a different beast, making Wednesday (surely always the best Addams?) the central character in a supernatural detective-style story.
Thing and Jenna Ortega as Wednesday in Tim Burton’s Addams Family reboot.Credit: Netflix
After an incident at her “normal” high school involving bullying jocks and two bags of piranhas, Wednesday (a superbly deadpan Jenna Ortega) is sent to the Nevermore Academy for “outcasts” (werewolves, vampires, sirens and gorgons) where her parents Morticia and Gomez met and fell in love.
The school – a more macabre Hogwarts-style institution, replete with gargoyles in the quadrangle – is run by the mysterious Larissa Weems (Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie), who also went to the school with Morticia and Gomez (here played by Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luiz Guzman) and seems to know some Addams family secrets.
From the outset, Wednesday has her heart set on escaping Nevermore and Thing, the family’s disembodied hand erm, pet (?) who has been sent to keep a watchful “eye” on her but instead becomes her partner in crime – or trying to solve crimes.
Luis Guzman as Gomez Addams, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams and Issac Ordonez as Pugsley Addams.Credit: Netflix
Nevermore is in the town of Jericho, inhabited by “normies” with a history of witch burning, and where mutilated bodies keep appearing in the local woods. Sheriff Galpin (Jamie McShane) is convinced it’s the work of the school’s students. But Wednesday, who has begun having grisly psychic visions, suspects someone – or something – else is to blame. Then there’s the grudge the sheriff has against Wednesday’s parents.
The gorgeously realised Wednesday is a classic Burton-style fish-out-of-water/teen coming-of-age tale; even among a cohort of otherworldly students, Wednesday is still an outsider.
Her roommate Enid (Emma Myers) is all sweetness and pastel hues, perkily updating her social media. “I find social media to be a soul-sucking void of meaningless affirmation,” deadpans Wednesday. When Enid offers Wednesday a “Wiki on Nevermore’s social scene” in a classic teen high-school trope, the main cliques are “furs, fangs, scales and stoners” – the latter being ancient monsters who can turn people to stone, rather than the usual pot-smoking wasters.
Even in a school of supernatural beings, Wednesday is still an outsider.Credit: Netflix
Wednesday’s snarky “bottomless pit of disdain”, as Enid puts it, could grow tiresome, but Ortega’s dialogue is too delicious, and of course there is eventually some – reluctant – growth for Wednesday. But she’s still an Addams, right to the end, even if she does find herself almost smiling at times by the series’ second half.
There’s also some snide social commentary about Puritan colonialism, among other decidedly adult gags, and even a role for Christina Ricci, who embodied Wednesday so wholly in the ’90s feature films. The original teen goth is now a “normie” dorm mother, Miss Thornhill.
For fans of Burton’s trademark dark aesthetic and the original Addams Family humour (there are subtle nods to the original comic strip and the 1964 TV series) there’s plenty to love, even if it’s all (beautifully) wrapped in a teen sleuthing storyline.
Wednesday is now streaming on Netflix.
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