Wayward is a Netflix No. 1 show. Is the thriller worth your time?
Mae Martin is aware of your confusion.
First, of course, that would be your confusion on what exactly is going on in Tall Pines, the fictional Vermont hamlet at the centre of Wayward, the new Netflix series Martin created, wrote and stars in.
For example: What does eerily calm leader Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette) mean when she tells the kids under her care at Tall Pines Academy, her cult-like school for troubled teens, that their mother has a door in her mouth?
Why does Alex Dempsey (Martin) find his pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), sleepwalking into the lake just a few days after they moved back to Tall Pines, which also happens to be Laura's hometown? Why do all the kids at the school keep claiming something wicked is going on behind closed doors? And why do the two Canadian teens Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind) seem to be the only ones willing to do anything about it?
But Martin is also aware that you may be confused by the tone of the show. Because "sinister" is not likely the first word people think of when it comes to the mostly light-hearted roles they've had in the past, including their championship turn on British panel show Taskmaster, their comedy podcast with Tig Notaro and that time they wore a Dune-inspired worm costume to host the Canadian Screen Awards.
"I wanted to tell a story about adolescence and coming of age and, you know, people trying to figure out who they are while everyone is telling them they who should be," Martin said in a recent interview with much of the cast, explaining where the inspiration came from. "And then the genre element — and the 'sinisterness' — was naturally there."
After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival last month then debuting on Netflix last week, the series shot to the No. 1 slot of the streamer's global TV category for English series.
Wayward has helped put Canadiana smack-dab in the centre of the cultural conversation, along with Kpop Demon Hunters, which was directed by Canadian Maggie Kang and has been in Netflix's top 10 list of English films for a record 15 weeks.
But unlike Kpop, Wayward puts its Canadian roots front and centre: almost egregiously so. The series simultaneously tells the stories of Alex, Abbie and Leila, who are all new to the insular, odd, Stepford Wives-vibe town.
Alex, a recently transplanted cop with a dark history, is struggling to get his life under control in Tall Pines (While Martin is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, their character is a trans man, going by he/him). A new baby on the way promises a potential future, but his wife's complicated history with Evelyn could derail it all.
Meanwhile, Alex's investigation into Evelyn's school brings up a pattern of mysterious disappearances: a reality that friends Abbie and Leila stumble onto after being shipped to the school by their parents. The friends realize they need to protect both one another as they try to expose the school for what it really is, all while attempting to advance through the institution's arcane system of behavioural levels, which culminate in the mysterious, potentially dangerous "leap" ceremony.
At every turn, the show reminds viewers that it was made by a Canadian, in Canada — seemingly for Canadians.
"I miss you friend. Nobody here is as jokes as you, and nobody thinks I'm smart like you do," Abbie says at one point in a letter to Leila before she joins her friend at the school. "And nobody's Canadian."
"We're survivors," is a later follow-up, coming just before yet another joke played at the expense of an American tricked into believing all Canadians are fluent in French. "We're Canadian, remember?"
The sometimes directly pandering Cancon self-inserts are unfortunately also the most unique thing about Wayward.
In a post-Stranger Things world, the appetite for vaguely supernatural, true crime-inspired bingeable fare is bottomless. In that landscape, Wayward doesn't do all that much to stand out, outside of regularly, repeatedly, incessantly reminding its audience that this show is, in fact, helmed by Canadians.
On the surface, that results in a good-enough thriller, if nothing to write home about: seemingly created by combining HBO's high school horror Yellowjackets with Netflix's Wild Wild Country, a (literal) cult classic exposé of a pseudo utopian society, then leaving to sit.
At least, on the surface. Though they're a horror neophyte, Martin knows enough to leave most of the show's grandest mysteries unsolved and amorphous; the most effectively unsettling aspect of Wayward is that the questions are given enough heft to suggest a host of terrifying possibilities, without holding the audience's hand through the actual answers.
Wayward's central theme of intimacy-as-horror is part of an interesting and growing pantheon that includes A24's romance-terror Together, Zach Cregger's familial nightmare Weapons, and even Celine Song's romcom inversion Materialists.
And the way the show grapples with queer themes does lend a bit of weight and originality, even if Wayward does try to have its cake and eat it, too.
It both presents Alex as a character whose trans identity doesn't need to dominate his motivations or plot, and injects late-stage questions around his desire to live a "normal" life. By trying to walk this tightrope, the story undercuts both admirable goals by not fully committing to either.
Wayward is further elevated by impressive performances from Martin and Collette, who do good jobs of carrying the story along, though the standout is the unfortunately underutilized Isolde Ardies as berserk snitch Stacey. Committing more time to her manic breakdown than the dizzying cast of characters we're asked to follow would have likely led to a more cohesive final product.
Instead, things are a bit more scattered. The questions at the centre of the town and the school are danced around, gestured at, perpetually built up — and then ignored for a Battle Royale-inspired episode that does everything but advance the story.
This is not to say Wayward is a failure, or unwatchable — far from it.
As a creative first from Martin, there are breadcrumbs of potential scattered throughout. Some elements — including a heartbreaking and innovative ending — even hint at greatness should they be developed in future episodes if the show is given a second season, or in a subsequent project from Martin.
But judged as a whole, this supernatural thriller is not quite great. At least, not yet.
cbc.ca
