Devil In OHIO Netflix Review: Netflix’s “Devil In Ohio”, a Suspense-Thriller LIMITED series has been released on the streaming giant this weekend based on a best-selling novel of the same name written by Daria Polatin who also serves as the Executive Producer for this series.
The show’s plot is led by the “A Satanic Cult” at its core which the audience eats up these days which is Netflix’s strong point as they’ve given us quite similar shows like that previously i.e., Midnight Mass, Archive 81, and a few other films.
The show stars Emily Deschanel who’s famous for playing the lead in Bones along with Sam Jaeger, Madeleine Arthur, Xaria Doston, Naomi Tan & Alisha Newton. The show is about a psychiatrist who brings home a teenage girl who runs away from a Satanic Cult which puts her family at risk, that’s the shorter version of it but the show has a lot of levels. Here’s our review of the series
Netflix does not put away an opportunity to Producer shows that have dark themes like Cults, Serial Killers since the rise of True Crime Drama has made it harder for any streaming service to do so but the more quantity of these types of shows you make, there are more chances that it doesn’t have the quality, and Devil In Ohio falls is another addition to it. The premise of the show isn’t bad, it’s quite interesting and to think, it’s based on a best-selling book the series does not do justice to the book and feels like a lousy adaptation.
The show is based on the life of Emily Deschanel as “Suzanne” who was abused in her childhood by her step-father until she decided to run away one day. She, now after works as a psychiatrist in a hospital and has 3 daughters and a loving husband. One day, she gets a call from her hospital about a girl that got admitted who seems like she’s fled from a cult and has a pentagram carved on her back.
To help her and due to the State’s not having enough resources to place her in a good home, she takes her home so she could open up and tell what happened for the investigation to proceed further and that is where the trouble starts.
The show does have a cult side story that the cult leader’s daughter who was supposed to be a sacrifice to the Devil has run away and is now sheltered by a doctor but the main story here is that a woman who has been through serious abuse in her childhood, when meets a teenage girl under worse circumstances is stopped at nothing to help her and in that process, she ends up ruining the relationships she currently has, as we see towards the end of the series.
All the cast have done their roles nicely but the spotlight goes to Madeleine Arthur who played Mae, the girl who flees from a satanic cult. Her acting in the series is flawless, you see a girl that doesn’t have much social experience and wishes to be liked by everyone, especially in Suzanne’s family, and her efforts in doing so involve worshipping Satan and asking for wishes, doing house chores like cooking and others.
Its not until the end of the series, we see that she isn’t as innocent as she has been portraying herself as and the ending of the series is something very interesting when the consequences of Suzanne’s actions end up in her family getting divided with her father taking care of the 3 daughters and Suzanne continuing to shelter Mae until she finds a permanent home for her.
Final Verdict: 2/5
The series could have been something way cooler and gripping but it isn’t. It isn’t until Episode 5 that you get some engaging and thrilling sequences. It’s okay to skip this one.