#netflix evil

[dragonfruityyy]

y’all netflix’s evil is fire, they get racism right

[starkmartell]

I’ve been binging the show “Evil” while I’m sick and dang this is a good show! And it also enforces the truth that children are terrifying lol

[iamnotawomanimagod]

I haven’t finished the first season yet, but I am really really enjoying Evil on Netflix so far.

Reasons why:

- Diverse and well-written characters, doesn’t rely on stereotypes to flesh them out

- Genuinely terrifying twist on possessions/demons

- Interesting dichotomy between the metaphorical “selling your soul to the devil” and the literal version.

- Constant back-and-forth between reasonable and logical explanations of supernatural phenomenon and spiritual/mysterious reasoning.

- One of the first pieces of media I’ve ever seen that actually did its due diligence in terms of research surrounding psychology and psychiatry - not a goddamn Freud reference in sight, thank god

- Interesting questions and scenarios surrounding faith, addiction, demons (literal and otherwise), technology, crime, and racism

- Amazing chemistry between the male and female leads

Parts of it have been really, really spooky and really disturbing, but in that “can’t look away” kind of way. There are some jump scares and it should be noted that the show is for adult audiences and covers mature and potentially triggering topics including suicide, sexual assault, racial bias in the medical field and the justice system, and more.

BUT if you’re able to stomach those things for the sake of incredibly well-written characters, clever dialogue, and genuine chemistry between the actors, it’s absolutely worth it! 

[alexeiadrae]

Thoughts on Evil

I finished watching Evil. For reference, I am an atheist and was raised in a secular household and I am a skeptic who loves folklore and scary stories and who also loves debunking paranormal claims. My husband is Catholic and believes in demonic possession and the end of days stuff, and somehow we work, just like Kristen and David somehow work. I am also a counselor so I am familiar with the mental health aspects that Kristen deals with, and since she was the skeptic and the atheist related to her on those levels, as well as balancing motherhood with a professional career even though I have a private practice and do not testify in court, and my husband is not an adventurer in any sense of the word and has been in the trenches with me for years.

That said, I wasn’t sure if I would finish it. One thing I have noticed about atheists who were raised in secular homes is that we tend to not find the demonic possession end of day stuff scary, and if anything we find it overacted to the point of ludicrousness if it isn’t boring as hell (can’t speak for all of us, but the overwhelming majority that I have talked to about it feel that way). My parents were both raised Methodist and found The Exorcist scary even though they had been atheists for years, so I think if you are raised Christian it is still scary even if you leave the faith, but if you are never raised to believe in it then it’s silly. Both my sister and I found it silly, even though other people our age who were Christian thought it was terrifying. And it extends to other movies and shows that feature demon possession and end of day stuff. While I love horror, it’s not a subset of horror that works for me.

So I don’t know if people raised in other belief systems like Islam or Buddhism find it scary (but would be interested in finding out!), but lifelong atheists tend not to. So for those reasons I wasn’t sure if I would finish it, and for the first few episodes I still wasn’t sure because, bluntly, the demon possession stuff just has me rolling my eyes with how over the top it is if I wasn’t laughing at how preposterous it was. So those elements definitely dragged it down for me. Yet there were elements that I really appreciated, and it did have one episode that terrified and disturbed me. So I finished it. Do I want to watch the second season? Not sure. Spoilery thoughts below.

-I did appreciate how at the beginning it illustrated how someone like Kristen would have a massive amounts of student loan debt and would be working her ass off to pay it. They sort of drifted from this. But at the beginning there was the sense of how it is hard juggling career and kids and paying the bills.

-While I did like some of the psychological aspects, there was some stuff that fell victim to me knowing the ins and outs of Kristen’s profession. Most counselors and psychologists, or the good ones at least, do see a therapist of their own to work on their own issues, get what they need to off their chest and ensure that they are in a good emotional state to practice, so I am glad that they showed Kristen going to therapy and working on her issues. That said, if someone stole a therapist’s client files, that would be a BFD, for both the practitioner and the thief. A practitioner could lose their license if they were shown to be negligent in handling the files. They could have also filed a lawsuit against Leland for stealing the files. And if I was a practitioner, I would want to know how the files were stolen. 

-Which is one of the weak points of the show. Why did Kristen feel like she had to take on Leland and LeRoux on her own? She hardly exhausted her options. She didn’t even tell her mother that Leland had threatened to kill her daughters, much less document the threat and work to get a restraining order against him (yes, I know, those don’t always work well but they give her a legal recourse). Ditto with LeRoux. One of my specialties is domestic violence and harassment so I am very familiar with the steps you would take to document all of that and get help before abandoning the idea, but Kristen didn’t try any of those. And while domestic violence and the like doesn’t appear to be her specialty it pops up frequently enough that it would be alarming if she didn’t know that. It took away a bit from me. Also, if someone had threatened my children, I would tell my children. Yes, I get you wouldn’t want your kids to be anxious, but in a case like that they would need to know. I would tell my husband. I would tell the police. In fact, as a mandatory reporter, Kristen would be legally obligated to call the police if someone made threats on someone else’s life, especially a child’s life. It blew my mind that she just kept it to herself. Especially as Leland did it in a public courthouse surrounded by people. I would find someone to corroborate.

Now a problem in these cases is someone making threats to harm or kill someone, being reported, and then denying it to the police and leaving them unable to do much. They could have written that in, but they didn’t, and it did not reflect well on Kristen IMO.

-Another counselor nitpick, a good counselor/psychologist would not start out by challenging a client’s beliefs but take time exploring them and mapping out how they think. This is two fold, helping the client to trust the counselor and feel validated by them while it helps the psychologist understand how they see the world and build a map of their thoughts process and belief system and give them clues to how to utilize it to help them get better. Basically if someone came into my office and said they were possessed by a demon I would go with it even though I don’t believe them because understanding how they think is more important than challenging everything right off the bat. 

-There were a few episodes that were very effective. The Halloween episode with the masked girl was chilling. The episode that really did it for me was when David was in the hospital and subjected to the whims of a sadistic, racist nurse. And what is interesting is what made is so chilling is that none of it was supernatural. But that thought of being held captive, drugged to the point of being unable to advocate for yourself and ask for help and at the mercy of someone who wants to hurt you was terrifying (and not to mention hard to watch). I also have a history of sleep paralysis, and the thing that would terrify me most when I was paralyzed was the thought that someone was in the room or outside my home wanting to hurt me and I couldn’t defend myself or even call 911. So David being medically paralyzed captured that feeling. I also hate IVs, absolutely hate them and have this fear that they will tear my veins out, so there were several scenes I could not watch. Finally, this happens. There have been nurses who have tormented and killed patients and they got away with it for years because they were able to cover it up. And my husband, who is mixed Pacific Islander, Asian and European but appears a racially ambiguous brown, is nervous about hospitals for that same reasons and because of mistreatment his father received when he was treated for lung cancer (they broke a mercury thermometer in his lungs) that likely contributed to his death. So that episode chilled me to the core for a number of reasons.

-That said, Kristen’s sleep paralysis stuff was not an accurate depiction of how it works at all. You can’t even talk when you have sleep paralysis. I was usually laughing at the scenes with George. George. I mean, how the fuck can you take a demon named George seriously? I laughed my head off when he said his name was George and wondered if I was suddenly watching a comedy. If I had sleep paralysis and a demon came in and said his name was George I would laugh myself out of it. 

-The episode with the boy who tried to drown his baby sister in the pool brought back memories of working in a children’s mental hospital. I saw something similar with a kid who was even younger. And that kid suffered abuse so horrific that it gave me and one of the other therapists working with them nightmares, and with the knowledge that we don’t have good treatment options for someone who exhibits the symptoms that kid did it was a horrible case. If I wake up one morning and see on the news that they were arrested for a string of murders or killing their kids I will not be surprised. You don’t need possession to explain this stuff. The truth, that someone would be so sadistically abusive to their own child, and that despite all of the red flags that this child’s parents were allowed to raise and abuse them for as long as they did and to the extent that they did, is far more terrifying. I guess that’s another reason I don’t like the demonic possession stuff. It gives abusers a way out. 

-So there were things I liked about it, and there were things I hated about it. I think I’ll see what the plot synopsis and reviews of the second season are like before committing.

[dirtangeldean]

can i just say that netflix's EVIL show while not terrible in the same ways as supernatural is like...how do i say this? idk not great? like it does have some interesting things but it is still such a rough watch? also i HATE the vignette style because too much is going unfinished per episode, ugh. also i hate that whenever anyone asks what's wrong everyone's like, "uh nothing" when “nothing” is like....literally a figure haunting them....or whatever. ugh. like kurt seeing that demon in the house and then being like...uhh nothing! even tho the demon left literally soot on his nose....like...kurt you literally know the least about all this shit, you better get some damn help!

[baelpenrose]

Netflix "Evil"

So...Evil, on Netflix. It's a great show. I actually mean it. The characters are compelling. The story is interesting. Fun mystery thriller, great chemistry between cast members, genuinely interesting formula of 'maybe magic, maybe mundane' each episode for a long time before the eventual reveal. Genuinely cool reckoning with modern issues. It's also propaganda for the Catholic Church and a violently regressive worldview in a thinly progressive coat of paint. Yeah, come on, you knew I was building to something. It's not a secret that most Christian media sucks. Thinly vieled 'convert or burn in hell, ye sinner, modern life is corrupting, blah blah blah' - there are exceptions, obviously, find me someone who says Narnia isn't compelling regardless of their beliefs and I'll show you a liar - but most christian media blows. For this reason, it probably missed your notice that at the end of the day, Evil isn't just a supernatural thriller that uses the trappings of Catholicism to tell a story, but a story that is itself, steeped and soaked in the worldview and assumptions of the catholic church. Yes. It has a lot of very good takes on race issues. It is actually cool when it says things like "yeah, there's racism in the church. There's sexism in the church." Law and Order is one of the most prolific pieces of Copaganda ever and it will say, 'there are racist cops. there are cops who go 'too far.' Law and Order will never say "policing itself is racist. Policing itself is an abuse of power by the state against the people." The Church itself is a misogynistic, racist, and colonialist institution to its core that has been responsible for a staggering amount of cultural genocide and direct genocide. Anything that elides that reality or deflects it onto 'bad actors' is vatican propaganda. Anything that does not acknowledge that the Vatican still believes ALL PEOPLE should give up their faiths to be Catholic is Vatican propaganda. 'Evil' does present an interesting story - demons running amok and doing demon things, causing problems on purpose through all sorts of interesting means. Sometimes science can prove that not everything is supernatural - in fact, in early seasons, it's 'usually' mundane. In later seasons, it usually isn't. It's usually magic - and psychiatry, a particular bugbear of the Catholic church, particularly hated because it explains by science what was previously explained as visions or revelations, is near-constantly derided as an obstacle to truth or a rationalization of something that should not, cannot, be rationalized. Hey, if you've watched - what percent of encounters with threats align, near-perfectly, with extremely conservative talking points about the 'corrupting influence of the internet on the youth?' Actually, no. Count for me. Has the internet been shown, ONCE, to be, not even benevolent, not even benign, but even passively risky instead of actively, overwhelmingly malevolent and even demonic? Almost every 'evil' act is the result of demons or at least demonic influence, and most of the time supernatural events that aren't coming from the very-specifically-Christian-and-more-specifically-Catholic God are shown to be evil or dangerous. Sure, there are fake or corrupt Catholics...but if you were going to make Catholic Propaganda for a progressive audience, just like intelligent copaganda...you'd start with trying to shift the blame from institutions to individuals...which is exactly what the series does. Listen. Yeah. Having interesting PoC characters, and interesting "girl power moments" is not enough to cover the fact that this is fundamentally propaganda for one of the most evil, blood soaked organizations in the history of the human race, aimed at a progressive audience. And the propaganda does get more obvious in later seasons, once they hope you've bought in.

[bugsfanficfaves]

I just started watching the show Evil on netflix and I absolutely love the main characters sleep paralysis demon George. He's fucking hilarious and I hope he's a real demon and not actually just in her head.