Netflix’s ‘Requiem’ Is The Creepiest Show Since ‘Dark’

Requiem is some high class Stephen King shit. I mean that in the best way possible. Netflix’s latest original series is scary and creepy and a tremendous homage to horror that doesn’t skimp on style.

Actress Lydia Wilson (About Time, Star Trek Beyond) stars as Matilda “Tilly” Gray, an ethereally beautiful cellist whose life understandably unwinds after she witnesses her mother’s suicide. When we first meet Tilly, she’s confident and a little catty. She tells her mother white lies and her lovers to scram out of her life as fast as they can. The only constant she has is her steadfast accompanist, Hal (Joel Fry). He’s almost pathetically devoted to her, and obviously in love with her.

Tilly’s mother’s violent and gory suicide comes as something as a shock. And Requiem bathes the tense moments leading up to it in the melodramatic tones of old school horror. The idea is that Tilly’s mom was literally haunted, but by a memory of a misdeed or something actually supernatural? That’s the question that the show poses and it propels Tilly to abandon her life in London to explore an unsolved mystery in the Welsh countryside. You see, Tilly’s mom was obsessed with the disappearance of a girl named Carys Howell…and other people related to the Howell case are also killing themselves dramatically for no worldly reason.

Though it has the glossy high production values of prestige TV, Requiem is still an unabashedly theatrical horror story. The devil is in its details: it’s got a creepy mansion, grisly suicides, shattered mirrors, invading shadows, a missing child, and funerals galore. Requiem’s heroine is a world-class cellist, which gives the show some sort of clever pretense for all the the moaning strings that accompany every scene. In fact, everything technical — sound cues, editing tricks, etc. — are all used to heighten the viewer’s sense of unease in obvious old-school ways. Still, this is a show that feels tailor-made for the Netflix age. It’s beautifully shot and full of dazzling performances. You could almost say that Requiem is horror for hipsters.

But what actually makes Requiem so damn watchable is Tilly herself. Wilson is able to flit from sorrow to mania, cynicism to despair whenever needed. When we meet her, she’s a thoroughly modern kind of diva. She’s focused on her career and laissez-faire about her love affairs. But as the story reveals itself, Tilly becomes a conduit for the supernatural. She’s besieged by nightmares that seem like visions, and visions that amount to hauntings.

Aesthetically, Wilson has been styled to look a little unworldly. Her shockingly bleached hair and blunt bangs give her the look of a fairy queen. Wilson’s big, sad eyes only add to sense that we’re falling under some sort of weary enchantment. Wilson does a great job of inviting you into the horror while still tethering you to reality. Soon, you find yourself totally sunk into mania of Requiem.

Spoiler alert, but by the end of the first episode, Tilly proclaims that she believes that she is Carys. That’s the easy, obvious answer to the puzzle. And Requiem knows this. It’s a show that knows how to plant seeds of doubt about Tilly’s theory, while at the same time feeding the audience more clues that point in that direction. Requiem also knows how to amplify the viewer’s own sense of dread. Just as we’re piecing the mystery of the Carys/Tilly connection together, we meet a cast of characters who all seem to know something they’re not sharing. It’s all very spooky.

Just as you think the show is leaning too heavily into the supernatural slog, Requiem introduces us to a couple of country cops played by Downton Abbey alums Brendan Coyle and Clare Calbraith.  Stephen Kendrick, the retired detective on Carys’s case, and PC Graves, the new police officer on the beat, bring some old-fashioned logic to the mystery, which is good because every other character we meet seems thrilled to toy with the audience. That includes a dashingly handsome Aussie who is in town because he’s recently inherited a mansion. I bet he’s not up to anything weird.

Requiem is an intoxicating thriller that’s perfectly suited for fans of the genre. But if creepy mirrors and things that go bump in the night aren’t your style, this horror mystery might not be your thing.

Requiem is now streaming on Netflix. 

 

Stream Requiem on Netflix