Wayward is a Netflix thriller in which a couple moves to a small community where everyone knows each other and the residents walk around looking blissfully happy. Idiots. Hasn’t television taught them that these places are creepy? At least in the big city you can ignore the psychopaths on the street. Here in Tall Pines, you are forced to have them over for dinner. It will not surprise you to learn that this is a drama with overtones of horror, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for in engaging performances.
At the heart of this pretty Vermont town is a “therapeutic school” for troubled adolescents, run by Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette). She’s the smiliest Tall Pines resident, and therefore the most sinister. The place is essentially a prison, complete with dehumanising rules and brutal staff. But it also has expensive fees, because it’s a place where strict middle-class parents send their kids for smoking pot and answering back. In the US, these facilities come under the banner of the “troubled teen industry”, of which there have been a number of real-life horror stories.
Toni Collette (left) plays Evelyn Wade, who runs a ‘therapeutic school’ for troubled adolescents – Michael Gibson/Netflix
The show begins with an escapee stumbling into the path of new arrivals Laura (Sarah Gadon) and Alex (Mae Martin, who also wrote the show). Laura spent some of her childhood in Tall Pines and wanted to return there to have the couple’s first child. Alex has taken a job as a local police officer and before long is investigating the goings-on at Evelyn’s establishment.
Teenagers are the target audience for Wayward, so most of the adults are awful, but the two youngest leads are rebellious characters to root for: best friends Abbie and Leila (Sydney Topliffe and Alyvia Alyn Lind), who are held at the facility against their will and are determined to break out. The show acknowledges its debt to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with a Gen-Z joke. “Work the system and stop trying to be Jack Nicholson,” someone tells Leila. “Is Jack Nicholson that old guy from As Good as It Gets?” she replies.
The horror tropes are well worn to anyone who has ever watched films, but will probably seem fresh to a young audience: echoes of The Stepford Wives, The Wicker Man and Rosemary’s Baby; the familiar plot points of secrets hidden in the cellar and things that go bump in the night. Collette’s character is underwritten, with nothing to explain her evilness save for a weak backstory that comes towards the end of the eight episodes. There are plot weaknesses too – what’s to stop Alex calling in help from an outside force, rather than remaining trapped in this community? And if there’s a reason for recurring motifs of toads and doors, I must have missed it.
Acting-wise, though, the show is elevated by Martin, who is best known as a comedian but fully commits to a serious role. Alex is an immensely likeable character, earnest and empathetic, and gets the audience fully onside.
Streaming on Netflix now
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