Plot: Devon thinks her sister Simone has a really creepy relationship with her new boss, the enigmatic socialite Michaela Kell. Michaela’s cult-ish life of luxury is like a drug to Simone, and Devonhas decided it’s time for an intervention, but she has no idea what a formidable opponent Michaela will be. Told over the course of one explosive weekend at The Kells’ lavish beach estate, Sirens is an incisive, sexy, and darkly funny exploration of women, power, and class.
Review: Netflix seems to have a thing for limited series about the filthy rich leading bizarre lives. Last year, Nicole Kidman and Liev Schrieber headlined The Perfect Couple, a soapy drama about murder and lies. With an ensemble cast featuring Meghann Fahy, The Perfect Couple was utterly ridiculous and strange. This year, the streamer is debuting the limited series Sirens starring Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon, along with Meghann Fahy in a more substantial role. Also completely ridiculous and strange, Sirens is a virtually nonsensical combination of plot elements and misdirects that does not know what kind of series it is trying to be. Co-starring Milly Alcock, Glenn Howerton, and Bill Camp, Sirens wastes a premise that could have developed into a guilty pleasure series, but instead serves as five hours you will never get back.
The series opens with Devon DeWitt (Meghann Fahy) being released from the drunk tank in Buffalo, New York, after texting her younger sister, Simone (Milly Alcock), dozens of times with no response. Returning home to her father, Bruce (Bill Camp), who suffers from dementia, Devon finds a fruit basket from Simone and sets out to track her down and give her hell. Devon finds Simone working as the executive assistant to the ultra-wealthy Michaela Kell (Julianne Moore) on a small island community off the coast of New York. Devon finds Simone changed into someone she barely recognizes as she idolizes Mikaela, or KiKi as she calls her affectionately, who runs her estate with the control of a cult leader. Devon sets out to rescue Simone from her posh new life and reveal the truth of who Michaela Kell is. The problem is that there may not be much to reveal.
While Sirens starts as a story about Devon trying to save her sister, the series never quite knows what it wants to focus on. At first, the bizarre way that Michaela prevents her staff from eating carbs, forces minute changes to decor and planning for the Labor Day events they have planned, and even the weird sayings that the Stepford Wife-like friends act like followers seems to point to a more nefarious mystery behind the series, nothing seems to matter overall. Devon struggles with her alcohol addiction which she replaces with promiscuous sex and her quest to save Simone begins to feel like an afterthought as additional plot threads are added including Simone’s relationship with the Kell’s neighbor, Ethan Corbin (Glenn Howerton) and the hushed whispers surrounding the disappearance of Peter Kell’s (Kevin Bacon) first wife, Jocelyn. There is also the mystery of why Simone is avoiding Devon, their father, and how she ended up in Michaela’s employ.
Meghann Fahy has had a solid run of performances since her turn in the second season of The White Lotus and this year’s thriller Drop, which have shown her range as a performer. Fahy gives the most nuanced performance in Sirens, but it falls short of what it could have been with the series giving so much focus to Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon. Milly Alcock is set to become big after her role in House of the Dragon and upcoming title turn in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. However, she is reduced to a caricature as Simone never becomes a fully realized character. Moore wonders with the vague mystery surrounding Michaela, but as her intensity opposite Kevin Bacon’s Peter comes to a head in the final episodes, it feels rushed and undeserved. So much of this series had potential, but instead, it squanders it in a rote and formulaic soap opera fantasy.
Created by Molly Smith Metzler and based on her play Elemeno Pea, Sirens is as confusing as its vague title. I thought it may be a reference to the mythological characters of the same name, but it is instead a code word shared between Devon and Simone that is never adequately explained. Metzler expanded her play into this five-episode limited series, several episodes that are at once too few and too many. Other writers include Bekah Brunstetter and Colin McKenna, with directing duties falling to Nicole Kassell (The Leftovers, Watchmen), Quyen Tran (Ahsoka), and Lila Neugebauer (Causeway), who have to cram a season’s worth of story into a limited number of chapters. It feels throughout the series that Metzler and the writing crew had ideas for subplots and twists that they wanted to use in a longer form story and crammed into Sirens without any logic or coherent explanation. The story reaches a major plot revelation in the penultimate episode before trying to wrap up everything in the hour-long finale tidily. The result is a confusing mess of a story that wastes so many developed elements and pays off none of them.
With some good supporting performances from Felix Solis, Lauren Weedman, Britne Oldford, and Josh Segarra, Sirens wavers back and forth from dark comedy to melodrama, often within the same scene. A lot is going on, and with none of it ever turning into a legitimate theme or narrative, Sirens becomes a glossy and beautiful waste of time. Kevin Bacon and Julianne Moore barely raise their energy to anything that evokes genuine emotion, while Bill Camp, Milly Alcock, and Meghann Fahy do the heavy lifting. All actors do what they can with the material, but the way this series ends completely neuters their effort and leaves you wondering what you just watched and why. Sirens is a beautiful mess of a series that struggles to justify why it even exists.
Sirens premieres on May 22nd on Netflix.
Source:
JoBlo.com
