143) NEW HORROR RELEASES - Wednesday (2022)

"Wednesday's child is full of woe."

Directors

Tim Burton, Gandja Monteiro, and James Marshall

Cast

Jenna Ortega - Wednesday Addams, Goody Addams

Gwendoline Christie - Larissa Weems

Emma Myers - Enid Sinclair

Percy Hynes White - Xavier Thorpe

Riki Lindhome - Dr. Valerie Kinbott

Hunter Doohan - Tyler Galpin
Jamie McShane - Sheriff Galpin

Christina Ricci - Marilyn Thornhill

Isaac Ordonez - Pugsley Addams

Luis Guzmán - Gomez Addams

Catherine Zeta-Jones - Morticia Addams

Fred Armisen - Fester Addams

George Burcea - Lurch

Victor Dorobantu - Thing

The new dark mystery series, "Wednesday," available on the streaming service Netflix, is more creepy, mysterious, and a bit spooky than it is ooky or cooky. Honestly, I don't know what "ooky" means, so if this series is actually that, I completely missed it. Still, I think it's safe to assume that the show is completely void of ookiness, which is fine with me. 

Directed by Tim Burton, the series, based on Charles Addams' cartoon "The Addams Family," premiered Nov. 23. 

The humor behind the Addams is the contrast between the strange and macabre family set against the rest of the relatively normal world, which the audience sees when they interact. The Addams think they're the normal ones, and the rest of the world is strange and unusual. 

"Wednesday" takes a more dramatic tone though maintains its comedic roots, unlike the T.V. sitcom "The Addams Family" that ran from 1964 to 1966. The sitcom is goofy and played for chuckles as is the nature of sitcoms. The same is somewhat true for the 1992 movie "The Addams Family" and its 1993 sequel, "Addams Family Values" both of which I enjoy. The movies have a darker, updated tone though still keep the same style of humor the cartoon is known for. 

As the title suggests, the new series centers around Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) - the eldest child of Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Morticia Addams (Catherine-Zeta Jones). Although, for anyone who follows the canon of the sitcom, Wednesday is the youngest Addams child.
The series starts with Wednesday getting expelled from Nancy Reagan High School. After she finds her brother, Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) stuffed in his locker, Wednesday has a psychic vision of the bullies who did this to him. So, she retaliates against Pugsley's bullies by letting piranhas loose in the school swimming pool while they're in the middle of water polo practice.

Gomez and Morticia decide to enroll Wednesday into a school where they think she'll fit in - Nevermore Academy.

The Academy, located in Jericho, Vt., has a student body of unusual outcasts, some with unusual powers. It's also the school where her parents first met. 

Wednesday, who has a cold and emotionless demeanor as she intellectually carries herself above everyone else, is bitter at her parents for placing her in Nevermore and swears she'll escape. 

Her cynical and emotionless personality also puts her at odds with the school principal, Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie). 

The state has ordered that Wednesday see a counseler, which she does. She reluctantly visits a therapist in town named Dr. Valerie Kinbott (Riki Lindhome) who seems to know a lot about her, to Wednesday's surprise. Dr. Kimbott doesn't react to Wednesday's attempts to intimidate. 

Before heading back home, Gomez and Morticia leave their sentient pet hand, Thing (Victor Dorobantu), at the school to keep a tab on Wednesday. 

Meanwhile, murders have been taking place around Jericho. Wednesday uses her newly found psychic ability to try to solve these mysterious killings. Early in the series, she witnesses a monster attack one of the students whom she followed into the woods. 

As Wednesday's visions become more and more vivid, her drive to solve the murders and find the monster grows more and more acute. 

Luis Guzmán, Jenna Ortega, and Catherina Zeta-Jones star as the Addams in "Wednesday."

She also learns that her father was accused of murder while he was a student at Nevermore back in 1990. The local sheriff (Jamie McShane) thinks Gomez is guilty despite not being convicted. So, he holds a long-time grudge.

Though Gomez was not convicted of the charge, his past comes back to haunt him when the family visits Wednesday in the middle of the school year. Wednesday thinks her father's murder accusation may have something to do with the murders the town is currently dealing with.  

Netflix posted on the platform's Facebook page that "Wednesday" now holds the record for most viewed hours (341.2 million hours) in one week for an English language program on their streaming platform. Netflix claims "Wednesday" is number one in 83 countries, tying the record with the fourth season of their other series "Stranger Things." 

Rather than create a new Addams series contrasting the entire macabre family against a relatively normal society, and then let the hilarity ensue, "Wednesday" puts the oldest Addams child in a boarding school with other outcast students just as strange and unusual (to some degree or another) as she is and turn the premise into a murder mystery. It turns Wednesday into a more relatable character on top of maintaining her dark and death obsessed nature, and razor-sharp personality.

We see Wednesday develop through the series as those who consider her a friend are soon left with telling her what they think of her. For instance, her bubbly werewolf dormmate Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) tells her just what kind of person she is to her face after Wednesday puts her in a life-or-death situation without any remorse.

One of Wednesday's admirers, Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White), a student who has the ability to give his artwork life (literally), puts Wednesday in her place after he catches her in a shed he uses as a private art space. He caught her outside the shed before, after she asked him to a school dance called the Rav'n only to cover her tracks in her investigations. Once he catches on to how she used him, he gets irate and says, "You are unbelievable."

"It's nothing personal," she nonchalantly replies.

"No, it never is with you, is it," he shouts. "I mean, do you even care about anyone or anything at all, Wednesday?" 

She finds herself speechless as a glisten of a tear looks like it's welling up in her eye.

"Get out," he barks at her. 

Though she tries to hide it, Wednesday can't help feeling the sting of truth that she's observed and critiqued just as much as she observes and critiques others. In other words, Wednesday learns that being an ass is a terrible thing. For someone who revels in pain and turmoil, this kind of pain doesn't feel too great. 

While the show is a mystery series, the "creepy and cooky" Addams style chimes in from time to time. Episode five, "You Reap What You Woe" is where the true Addams form really comes out. This is the episode where Wednesday's family comes to visit Nevermore for the school's yearly "parent's weekend." 

In episode seven, "If You Don't Woe Me by Now," Wednesday's Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen) shows up to visit his niece and brings with him the Addam's family style and feel. 

Of course, like most everything else coming out of Hollywood, the series goes out of its way to mark off all the current ideology checkmarks. 

Then again, such modern ideology fits in a show about someone as dark, strange and void of personality like Wednesday Addams.

In one scene, she accuses a male student of "mansplaining" which made me cringe. Watching Wednesday explain everything to everyone, only to criticize someone - a male student - for explaining something to her doesn't make much sense. And it's even funnier that Wednesday would subject herself to a nonsense word like "mansplain." 

But, for Hollywood, all that matters is stuffing in as many tenets of the modern political credo repeated over and over again like a religious mantra into as much content as possible is all that matters for Hollywood. By this point in time, it just induces eyeroll after eyeroll.  

Outside of that nitpick, the series nicely depicts two sides of Wednesday. There's the Wednesday who's driven. Then there's the familiar Wednesday who welcomes all things sinister and haunting. 

"If you hear me screaming bloody murder, there's a good chance I'm just enjoying myself," she says during one of her investigations. 
Instead of playing to the comically grim side of the character as seen in the comics, sitcom, and the movies, Wednesday is portrayed as a coming-of-age teenager taking a harsh grudge towards her parents, especially her mother, while learning how she's seen by others whether she likes it or not.
No matter how much she holds herself up above her peers and her parents, and no matter how strange and unusual she presents herself, her problems and inner struggles are just like others her own age.
Part of that experience is Wednesday seeing things through the eyes of her parents. Like most teenagers, even Wednesday goes through a rebellion, even towards her mother whom she looks up to in other Addams Family depictions. 
The 2021 animated film "The Addams Family 2" also focuses on Wednesday's (voiced by Chloë Grace Moretz) relationship with her family. In that movie, she tries to distance herself from them after discovering that she may not be their biological daughter despite being similar in personality. So, Wednesday focuses on the differences between herself and the rest of them while on a family road trip.

With this new series, we see a side of the character not necessarily depicted before - bitterness towards those close to her. After her parents drop her off at the Academy, Wednesday threatens to escape and never see her mother again.
"You're a brilliant girl, Wednesday, but sometimes you get in your own way," Morticia says before they leave their daughter at school.
She gives Wednesday a necklace with an obsidian emblem bearing a "W" on one side which turns to an "M" on the other side when flipped, as a symbol of their connection. But Wednesday mocks the gesture, calling the necklace a "toe-curling chotchkie."
"I'm not you, mother," she says. "I will never fall in love, or be a housewife, or have a family." This is the kind of turmoil even the Addams won't relish.

Ortega's performance is full of well-played detail, right down to long periods without blinking. Her furled gaze through her black eyebrows makes her the next best Wednesday since Christina Ricci, who plays the character in the 1992 movie and its sequel. By the way, Ricci has a supporting role as Botany Professor Marilyn Thornhill. 

Wednesday is bright for a dark child. Ortega's inflections and mannerisms are perfect in this role. 

Burton hand-picked the cast, and I can see why he saw Wednesday in Ortega. Her Wednesday puts her intelligence to good use, making her fit to be the detective she is. For the rest of the cast, they resemble the characters from the cartoon better than any other Addams Family movie or series.

Ortega is certainly no stranger to horror as the 20-year old actress previously starred in such movies as "Insidious: Chapter 2" (2013), "The Babysitter: Killer Queen" (2020), "Scream" (2022) "Studio 666" (2022), "X" (2022) and is scheduled to appear in the sixth installment of the "Scream" series.
The atmosphere at Nevermore Academy is certainly a Harry Potter-esque style with its paranormal nature, and odd student body mixed with Tim Burton's macabre gray tone protruding through. I wouldn't call it a stunning style. It's what's to be expected, especially regarding Burton's version of the macabre. 

It's heavier on the eerie and ghastly than on the surreal and nightmarish. I can see Burton's style in the look of the monster, referred to as a "hyde." It would easily fit within his 1988 movie "Beetlejuice." And the truck driver in the beginning of the first episode ever-so-slightly resembles "Large Marge" from his movie "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."

There's a scene in which Wednesday plays her cello in the town square during an unveiling while the statue of the town's founder, Joseph Crackstone, is lit on fire and burns while ceremony attendees run around in a panic. It is truly a heavy scene that sums up Wednesday Addams perfectly.  

Each episode left me eager to watch the next. I appreciate the series doing something different with the Addams rather than just creating an updated live-action series with the humor and style we've already seen before. Using Wednesday's knowledge and brilliance to create a mystery series is enticing. Overall, I can see why this new series became successful so quickly.