There are a lot of elements that go into telling a good story — compelling characters, interesting worldbuilding, or an unforgettable plot —and within each of those elements are a lot of facets that can help a writer, director, artist, or any other kind of storyteller build their tale.
The majority of well told stories include a balanced approach to all (or at least most) of these elements, but every now and then you get a story that pushes one particular concept to the forefront and stakes itself on the success or failure of how it manages THAT element. One such example of this strategy can be found in the Netflix Miniseries Something Very Bad is Going to Happen. The element brought to the forefront? The deft use of foreshadowing, tension, and “Promise vs Payoff” to drive the piece to its thrilling conclusion.
Foreshadowing and Misdirection:
Spoiler Warning! While I will try in the writing of this piece not to spoil the story too badly for anyone who has not had the opportunity to watch the show, it is very hard to talk about the concept of “Promise vs Payoff” in a piece without some details of that eventual payoff being revealed. Beyond that, it might be argued that the fact that something bad will happen in the final arc of the show should not be that big of a surprise — after all the show is called Something Very Bad is Going to Happen.
Before you even start to watch, that name is serving as the very first and most direct promise of what is to come — Something Very Bad. If that was not enough, in the first episode we get flash forward to a camera moving along a hallway soaked in blood, the sounds of screams echoing from out of frame. When the action goes back to “Five days before I do,” the show begins a ticking clock that is building towards that very first promise. The question posed by the plot is not so much “Will they be able to avert the tragedy?” as it is “What is that tragedy actually going to be when it arrives?” (and as we get to know and love the characters, the added question of “who, if anyone, will survive?”)
Several of the early episodes follow a format that takes advantage of this tense throughline. The show introduces something that is strange or foreboding and we begin to hint that this will be the very bad thing that is coming. Then we discover a reasonable, mundane explanation to that tension and the story continues on with the characters believing the crisis is averted.
During these early misdirects, the viewer gets to know the main characters: Rachel Harkin (Camila Marrone) is the bride to be, preparing for her wedding to “Nicky” Cunningham (Adam DiMarco). In addition to this being their wedding weekend, Rachel is meeting her fiancé’s family for the first time at their remote wilderness cabin. (One notable member of that family is Nicky’s father played by Ted Levine, who in one scene is shown skinning the family’s dead dog so that he can taxidermy it. While we never actually saw him with a knife when he played Buffalo Bill in ‘Silence of the Lambs’, the image of him at the skinning table is a very cool callback.)
Hidden among the early episodes are several unsettling elements that are not simply explained away, such as a stalker who cryptically asks Rachel if she’s “Sure he’s the one” or a family myth about a monster called the “Sorry man” — an entity from hell who turns women inside out in hopes of finding his wife. Some of these aspects will factor into the eventual, actual payoff — so viewers are made to sort through these elements to separate the decoys from the foreshadowing!
Keeping Things Fresh in the Third Act Reveal:
One common pitfall in this style of storytelling, where the mystery is obfuscated in layers of misdirection, is that when the third act plot point is finally revealed they often fall flat. After all the twists and turns of a complicated story like Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen it can be easy for the last act — once we finally KNOW what the threat is — to feel lackluster compared to the buildup. Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen avoids this fate by inserting several last minute twists into the plot so that each time the viewer thinks they finally know what’s going to happen there is one more turn of the knife.
Then when bloody calamity finally does strike, it’s still not over. I won’t spoil the ending, but even when you think the plot must have finally run its course, there’s still room for one finale surprise.
If there are any weaknesses in the series, it would be that some of the secondary characters feel two dimensional or rushed. This is a little odd given how much time Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen spends in a single location with a small, set cast of characters (aside from one flashback episode which features a great performance by Victoria Pedretti as Rachel’s mother). They focus this time instead on the inter-character tensions and let the character mystery drive the feeling of dread, to great effect.
Aside from its masterful play with “Promise and Payoff”, the show is an unsettling look at the institutions of marriage. The entire story can be seen as a dark twist on the familiar vow ‘Till Death do us part’ and a horrifying not-so-optimistic view on the entire concept of soulmates.
For all the mystery that surrounds the characters, it warns you from the beginning and at the top of every episode that Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — and then casts a spell where you cannot look away until the last, bloody second.