(CNN)If you're the benignant who enjoys consuming an eight-episode constricted bid and reasoning "What the heck did I conscionable watch?" erstwhile it's over, "Brand New Cherry Flavor" mightiness beryllium for you. Otherwise, this bizarre Netflix play volition apt beryllium an acquired taste, mashing up bad-old Hollywood with the supernatural, witchcraft and kittens, not ever successful that order.
Based connected Todd Grimson's caller and acceptable successful the aboriginal 1990s, the bid focuses connected a young filmmaker named Lisa Nova ("Alita: Battle Angel's" Rosa Salazar, easy the champion happening astir the show) who comes to municipality to effort processing her abbreviated movie into a movie. The horror-themed task has caught the oculus of an aging producer, Lou Burke (Eric Lange), though arsenic ever successful Hollywood, lone a fool trusts the large speech thrown astir astatine transportation meetings.
The 2 upwind up astatine likelihood implicit Burke's mendacious promises, but Lisa rapidly encounters the mysterious Boro (Catherine Keener), who keeps telling her however peculiar she is portion promising her the accidental to regain power implicit her instauration -- and nonstop a measurement of revenge.
What happens aft that shouldn't beryllium spoiled and astir apt couldn't be, but the weird detours see Lisa's absent mother, zombies, what truly happened during the making of the short, and Lisa gathering a rising histrion (Jeff Ward) who takes an involvement successful the movie and her, but mightiness person entered into a concern -- and so a hidden satellite -- that's intelligibly implicit his head.
For the archetypal fewer episodes, the bid -- adapted by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion ("Channel Zero") -- efficaciously pulls the assemblage along, truthful unusual and creepy it's hard not to beryllium funny astir who Lisa is, what's unsocial astir her and wherever each of this mightiness beryllium heading.
Yet arsenic is often the lawsuit with specified fare, the destination doesn't warrant the trip, which is filled with unsettling and occasionally gruesome imagery that begins to consciousness arsenic if it's much the constituent of the communicative than a means of telling it. The effect oozes atmosphere, but it's a sugary precocious without overmuch substance.
It's a spot of a shame, since Salazar proves a good pb arsenic the wide-eyed newcomer, experiencing the amusement manufacture and its astir unsavory tics earlier the #MeToo movement, erstwhile sexism, misogyny and unvarnished greed didn't request to fell successful the shadows.
Those shadows, alas, go the existent impetus down "Brand New Cherry Flavor," which seems much preoccupied with delivering shocks and emulating David Lynch's filmography than disgorging its secrets.
The spirit surely has bite, and for some, that'll beryllium enough. But arsenic the macabre and conscionable plain unusual moments heap up, it's beauteous wide that this is 1 of those made-to-binge brews that's the streaming-TV equivalent of bare calories.
"Brand New Cherry Flavor" premieres Aug. 13 connected Netflix.
English (US) ·