‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’ Team Explains That Bloody Ending (VIDEO)
Soulmates, curses and freaky families, oh my!
The moody, messy horror series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen just dropped on Netflix, and we are so into it. First off, it’s a wholly original idea, not an adaptation, remake, or update. It’s stylish as hell, thanks to creator and showrunner Haley Z. Boston. It’s got a stellar cast led by the captivating Camila Morrone (Daisy Jones & The Six) and White Lotus‘ Adam DiMarco as adorable nearly-weds. It’s darkly funny when not downright frightening. And it’s not at all what you think it is. Warning: Spoilers for Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen ahead!
“The tone of the show is just kind of what it’s like to be inside of my head,” jokes Boston, a former writer on the equally wild Brand New Cherry Flavor. “That balance of dread and humor…it’s just the way I see the world.”
Opening with Rachel and Nicky’s wintry drive to spend the week leading up to their wedding with Nicky’s family, it becomes very clear that something bad is going to happen. We get flashes of a gruesome gathering, carnage-strewn hallways, and ominous run-ins with roadside strangers. Once they get to his sprawling family mansion in the woods, things go from “huh” to “hell no” pretty quickly as the show flips the script mid-season after the chronically anxious Rachel encounters a mysterious man called The Witness (Zlatko Buric). Turns out, it’s not Nicky’s oddball family (including mom Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ted Levine, and a fabulously off-kilter Gus Birney) escalating her sense of doom, it’s an ancient curse that’s been plaguing her lineage for ages: If she marries someone who isn’t her soulmate, she’ll die. But if she calls off the wedding, she’ll live and the curse will jump to the jilted groom’s family.
Courtesy of Netflix
“[In Episode] 4, we’re hit with the reality of why I’ve always felt this way and carried this weight,” explains Morrone, an uber-charismatic mashup of Anne Hathaway‘s grace and Sandra Bullock‘s wit. “It’s because this horrible thing has happened to my mother and has been in my bloodline for generations. It’s a very validating episode for Rachel, and it really makes her life come full circle and her anxieties be seen and understood by her. She has a much better understanding of herself after the curse.”
What the info doesn’t help with is what Rachel needs to do. Throughout the second half of the season, she searches for ways to circumvent the curse, at one point going full Scooby-Doo with her future sister-in-law Nell (Karla Crome) and even having her pinky toe amputated by Nicky’s brother Jules (Jeff Wilbush) right before the wedding to fulfill a recipe that may help her survive.
Eventually, it’s time to walk down the aisle and all hell breaks loose. Having just learned about his dying mother’s long-ago affair, Nicky realizes that marriage has been its own curse for his family and balks at saying “I do,” condemning Rachel — and now his bloodline — to a certain fate. The two talk it out and, paired with pressure from his relatives, agree to exchange vows. Back at the altar, Rachel then has an epiphany that she is not going to risk dying for a guy who was willing to sacrifice her for his own horrifically unhappy family. So, she says hard pass and boom…Nicky’s side of the guest list starts bleeding out all over the place. Except Nell and Jules, whom Boston verifies were soulmates all along.
Courtesy of Netflix
“I knew I wanted a bunch of people to bleed to death at the wedding,” admits Boston, who hadn’t actually added the curse element to the story when she sold the series. “The idea was to kind of figure out Rachel’s emotional journey first, and then add this curse on top of it that was a one-to-one to what she was going through emotionally.”
Once the twist was in place, “we went full-bloodbath for a few days,” recalls Morrone of shooting the icky, eye-bleeding sequence that soaks the season finale. “[We] saved the blood for the last three or four days of shooting. Because once you bloody [it], you can’t unbloody the house and it’s like a commitment.”
“Everyone’s slipping,” adds DiMarco, who slyly plays Nicky as that sweet guy you can’t fully trust. “I fully slipped and fell on my tookus in the finale…and then I was like, ‘Let’s just go again. Let’s just go again.’ But then when the blood starts to dry, it gets really sticky and you’re just kind of like walking and trying to make it look natural, too. And then you can’t have footsteps in it, [so] you have to reset the blood. It is a big technical thing, especially when a whole house is covered in blood.”
Not just the house and the guests, but Rachel as well. However, after her blood-saturated body collapses in the snow, Death comes a knockin’ and claims The Witness instead, leaving Rachel to rise back to life, ditch Nicky for good and take over as the harbinger of the curse. “She ultimately decides to choose herself,” offers Boston. “It’s a breakup story, so she needed to die and be reborn. That’s what happens when you exit a relationship, and now she’s free and onto her next adventure.”
Hopefully one that leads her to a love that’s actually worth dying for.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, Streaming Now, Netflix
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