Wednesday
Netflix’s Wednesday slices like a guillotine.
By C. A. Ramirez
Wake the dead, Wednesday is Woe-derful!
Hogwarts from hell. Twilight in turmoil. Tim Burton resurrects the Addams family through its most macabre character and has delivered us a woe-derful anti-hero in Netflix’s Wednesday.
The series opens with Wednesday Addams walking through Nancy Reagan High, a black sheep among proud conformists. She represents the rebel in us all. After throwing two bags of piranhas in the school pool, Wednesday is expelled and forced to attend her parents’ alma mater, Nevermore Academy. A school for the nefarious. Home to psychopaths, fiends, mad-dog killers. Brutes my dear Mediums. Pioneers. Lest we forget.
Wednesday and Thing, a Duo.
Jenna Ortega plays Wednesday masterfully. She captures the stone-faced gaze Christina Ricci wielded in 1992’s The Addams Family with all the awkward grace of April Ludgate from Parks and Recreation. The result is a female lead that captures the attention of the viewer like a thief in the night. Wednesday is a black comedy drama that horrifies as much as it delights. Bliss.
The Women of Wednesday.
Standing tall, dark, and beautiful is the principal of Nevermore Academy, Larissa Weems. Played by Game of Thrones heroine, Gwendoline Christie, the actress is a tour de force. She exudes strength and grace through her character while still managing a foreboding and inviting persona, a fantastic character with a dark secret and soft heart. J.K. Rowling would be proud. Wednesday’s characters brings the world of Nevermore Academy to life.
Tim Burton has succeeded in presenting a ghastly vision that both terrifies and seduces the audience with every grisly scene. The music is top-notch. As a former first chair cellist (major flex), Wednesday’s rendition of “Paint it Black” by The Rolling Stones gave me goosebumps. Burton will have my praise to the grave for bringing the cello front and center. No other instrument would have suited Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday, and it will inspire our black clad youth to rosin up their bows. To orchestra teachers everywhere, children of chilling visage make the best cellists.
Wednesday Plays as Jericho burns.
Wednesday takes the darkest parts of the 1992 feature film and brings it into the light. Stellar performances by Jenna Ortega are accompanied by an equally entertaining plot that throws the gruesomely captivating character into the role of supernatural detective. She seeks nothing out but solitude and in doing so, becomes the only person in Nevermore Academy that can solve a series of brutal murders that has plagued the surrounding town of Jericho. When a student is found slain, the Sheriff of Jericho becomes involved, shedding light on Morticia and Gomez Addams past at Nevermore Academy decades prior. Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia and Luis Guzman in the role of Gomez are pitch perfect. They match the 2019 animated Addams Family characters in a frightening way, and the Netflix series is all the better for it. They shoot in and out of the script, lending enough context and exposition to keep the world of Nevermore Academy and Jericho from ever growing stale. Wednesday is a wild ride that feels like a Nancy Drew novel set in the fires of Hell itself, or Los Angeles.
Wednesday is a gothic triumph that dares to inject its gruesome tone into the heart of Netflix. Tim Burton and Jenna Ortega go together like Jonny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. A hallowed relationship between actor and director such as this occurs once every hundred thousand years or so, when the sun doth shine and the moon doth glow and the grass doth grow. The Addams Family is an American tradition. The right to celebrate who you are regardless of how you look and the stomachs you churn. Wednesday is here to celebrate the joy of solitude and the beauty of individualism. All others be damned.
