The Body Is The Next Great Supernatural Thriller Show
Netflix’s new series is gripping, girly, and full of questions that will keep you glued to the couch.
There is something inherently scary about the Catholic Church. Maybe it's the eeriness of relics, the smell of the incense, or the belief in actual, literal transformation, but the veil between the spooky and the devout is thinnest in the Catholic Church. Just look at movies: the Catholics have The Exorcist, The Nun, Immaculate, and The First Omen.
Now, the religious horror subgenre is moving to a new setting: high school. Netflix’s latest series The Body follows a scandal after a Catholic school dance team initiation and, along the way, explores queer identity, girlhood, religious psychosis, mass hysteria, and the power of suggestion. But beyond all else, it’s Netflix’s next hit — and the obvious replacement for a popular show that’s on the way out.
The Body, created by actress-turned-showrunner Quinn Shephard, the mind behind the underrated Hulu series Under the Bridge, focuses on a dance team at St. Mark’s, a classic Catholic school. After Maddie (Shirley Chen) breaks her ankle, the team holds auditions for a new member, and Maddie’s devout best friend Grace (Sofia Wylie) beats out the mysterious new girl Lisbeth (Geena Meszaros).
Grace Franklin becomes the unlikely source of possible miracles in The Body.
But while the team holds a Halloween party as an initiation for Grace, tragedy strikes. Grace seemingly has a bad reaction to the ecstasy she was given, and when team captain Anya (Kristina Bogic) and Lisbeth find her, they go to some pretty extreme measures. Grace ultimately slips into a coma, and what really happened on Halloween night quickly becomes a point of debate, especially as various characters start claiming to have seen Grace visit them.
Much like other religious-tinged stories of mass hysteria, such as the witch trials or the laughter epidemic in the 1960s, theories abound. Is Grace possessed by the devil, an unintended consequence of Anya offering Grace as a “sacrifice”? Is she a saint, interceding for others from her sickbed? Is she just the unlucky victim of a high school party gone wrong?
If we are going to get answers to these questions, it’s definitely not going to be anytime soon. It’s the central mystery in an increasingly complicated saga that’s much more like Lost than Riverdale. At its core, The Body is the next in a long line of “mystery box” shows, shows that present a confounding mystery and explore it over years.
If there’s one show to compare The Body to, it’s Yellowjackets. Much like the Showtime series, The Body is set in the past, specifically early November 2004, and it also focuses on a high school team of girls faced with a tragedy that forces them to get their stories straight, even as it appears that a supernatural force gets involved.
As Grace’s “influence” increases, it gets hard to figure out which visions are real and which are fake.
With Yellowjackets ending in a little more than a week, it leaves a pretty big void that could be seamlessly filled by this show. But with the streamlined story, not a divided one, it has the time to sink its teeth into these characters and explore their secrets, like the girls in love who are hiding it from everyone and the one girl who isn’t even Catholic. Much like Yellowjackets, the casting is also spot-on, especially when it comes to The Pitt’s Jackson Kelly as Lisbeth’s brother Leo and former NFL player (and current Mr. Kerry Washington) Nnamdi Asomugha as Father Franklin, Grace’s uncle with secrets of his own.
If it weren’t for the fact that Carrie came out just last month, The Body could be described as Mike Flanagan’s take on a high-school story. Just like Netflix’s other proven winners, The Haunting of the House on the Hill and Midnight Mass, this series explores how culpability can hang over you and how eager people are to believe in something bigger than you.
It’s obvious there’s a reason why so many stories take place in Catholic high schools: it combines the most restrictive community with the most rebellious time in a person’s life. Add in a possible miracle and a raucous party, and that’s the perfect combination for Netflix’s latest hit.
