WWhat is more judgmental than a teenage girl? Easy: the Catholic Church. Delightfully, Netflix’s new YA drama The Body has equal parts both. It’s Halloween 2004 at St Mark’s Catholic School and the social hierarchy is exactly as you would expect. Perched at the top is the dance troupe, the Lions, presided over by Anya (Kristina Bogic) and Elise (Sara Boustany), two best friends circumventing their sexual chemistry. The series’ resident outcasts are Lisbeth (Geena Meszaros) and Leo (Jackson Kelly), formerly homeschooled siblings who live a limited existence with their ailing mother. Leo appears to be a harmless weirdo (or do his disturbing drawings suggest otherwise?) while Lisbeth is a classic loser desperate to ingratiate herself with the cool crowd.
Her opportunity comes when she is invited to a Halloween party at an abandoned convent nicknamed the Devil’s House…what could go wrong? Dressed as a “Bitch God” in an attempt to meet the raunchy dress code, Lisbeth goes to the party, where she is disappointed to learn that an open spot on the Lions team has been taken by Grace (Sofia Wylie), the pious niece of the school priest. But when an ecstasy-fueled, Satan-harassing initiation ritual leaves Grace in a coma and the Lions suffer hallucinations and convulsions, the balance of the school is upset.
With a dark secret at the heart of a group of young people and a queen bee indebted to a misfit, The Body fits perfectly into the high school pop culture canon. Coded in Heavily Cruel Intentions – there are even Catholic schoolgirls drinking coke in toilets – it also gleefully references a plethora of other early 2000s teen films, from Bring It On to But I’m a Cheerleader.
While there are many tropes, The Body comes from Quinn Shephard, creator of Under the Bridge (another dark miniseries about adolescence), and she completely understands the brutal whiplash of adolescence. The central trio of actors – relative newcomers – take familiar stereotypes and twist them into something more interesting and quirky. While Lisbeth takes every opportunity to force her way into the inner circle, Anya denies her attraction to Elise, who is increasingly tortured by rejection. Even the occult cannot stop a teenager from seeking to discover who he is; anyone who has been a teenager knows that psychological torment is at least comparable to demonic hysteria.
Whether or not something supernatural is happening, the series recognizes the parallels between adolescence and religion: both are all-consuming, often euphoric, and sometimes very dangerous. Above every adolescent transgression looms a crucifix, and the social codes of the school are as inscribed as any in the Bible.
The Corps is brooding, gothic and – like the Catholic Church – seriously focused on symbolism (there are lots of writhing snakes). But it’s also sexy without being seedy and happily camp from the start: it opens by coupling scenes of students receiving the Eucharist with the Lions laying on each other on the school lawn.
For millennials who spent 2004 dancing to Hey Ya! at house parties and wearing skinny scarves, the retro hit is visceral. Instant messaging, texting, rhinestone slogans on velvet, The Simple Life on TV and a soundtrack by Kelly Clarkson, Ciara and Sean Paul place The Body firmly in a world taking its last breaths before social media goes global. It was a deeply confusing time for young women navigating their sexuality, and depending on your high school experience, the nostalgia is potentially more horrifying than any of the supernatural scares on offer.
Like many streaming shows, the eight-episode series could use some pruning. As indulgent as it is, the pace is slow and the drugged boys loitering on the sidelines are considerably less interesting than the girls.
As a gay-centric Mean Girls meets Carol Morley’s The Falling, its misbehaving teens provide infinitely more good times than Euphoria. The body vibrates with all the great feelings of adolescence – angst, lust, cruelty and deep shame – reveling in the high stakes of adolescence and how unholy the transition to adulthood can be.
Gn entert
