Connect with us

Editorials

“Marianne” Creator Samuel Bodin On What He Had Planned for Season 2 of Netflix’s Series [Phantom Limbs]

Published

on

Marianne Netflix Horror
Emma (Victoire Du Bois) with the title character, Marianne

phantom limb /ˈfan(t)əm’lim/ n. an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.

Welcome to Phantom Limbs, a recurring feature which will take a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes – extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore – that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, we will be chatting with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insight into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.

For this installment, we’ll be taking a look at the unproduced second season of Netflix’s brilliant yet sadly cancelled French horror television series Marianne. Joining us is Samuel Bodin, the creator/co-writer/director of Marianne, who will be clueing us into what was meant to transpire after the first season’s chilling final moments. Along the way, Mr. Bodin will discuss why the show was cancelled, whether or not it could still be renewed in light of its considerable international reception, and if the story of Marianne, Emma and Co. could possibly live on in other media.

And for those who haven’t yet seen Marianne, make certain to remedy this quickly. The show is excellent, and the following discussion will be spoiler-filled.


Victoire Du Bois as Emma Larsimon

Premiering in September 2019, the first season of Marianne quickly garnered stellar reviews (it sits at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing) and a fanbase all too happy to sing its praises. With its positive reception and a finale that begs for further installments, a second season would have seemed a foregone conclusion for this dark little gem of a show. And yet, Netflix ultimately made the choice to cancel the series. Mr. Bodin explains: “At first, we didn’t know which numbers that Netflix were considering to give a green light for a second season. We didn’t know if it would be the international numbers, or the French numbers. When you create a horror story in France, you count on international distribution. It’s in the international that you can find your audience. There are horror lovers in France, they love it a lot, but it’s a little niche. So when you start to create a horror story in French, you create it to open it to the world. What we have learned after the opening of the first season is that Netflix, for a French series, only looked at the numbers of French people who had finished all of the season. Marianne went very, very well at the international level, and I am so happy that Marianne was so watched and seen, but the number of French people who finished the show in France was not big enough to justify a second season. So they cancelled the second season.”

As it stands then, we have only the one season of Marianne. But what was the initial plan for the series? How many seasons might the show have gone, and how much planning and writing had gone into blocking out those follow-up seasons? “At the time, I really wanted to do three seasons. The story in my head takes three seasons, three acts for me. Three big chapters. With Quoc Dang Tran, my co-writer, we had started to work on the second season because Netflix loved the show, and they asked us to start writing very soon after Season 1’s release. So with Quoc and another writer, Julien Honoré, we started working.”

Lucie Boujenah as Camile

So what would the second season’s story have entailed? Mr. Bodin notes here that the plot points are a bit messy, as the writers’ work had just begun. “With the first season, the theme is friendship, and forgiveness. What we wanted to say was that you can be friends with people for a long time if you can forgive. If you can forgive very bad things, you will be friends forever. To accept friends as they are, with the mistakes they’ve made. For the second season, we really wanted to talk about love. Because in the first season, Emma tells herself that she’s in love. But she’s not in love. It was the idea of love in her head. In the second season, we wanted her to really fall in love. She would really fall in love with an older woman – a very classy, sophisticated novelist. [Emma] hated what she wrote, and she meets this person in a strange circumstance, and falls very, very deeply in love. Also, the story of the second season is about what mistakes you can make when you really fall in love. This woman will use her in a diabolical, evil way. Camile [Emma’s assistant], tries to save Emma and open Emma’s eyes to the love between [she and Camile]. It was her arc in the second season.

The second thing – we really wanted to expand the universe. We really wanted to go in the city that we talked a lot about in the first season. A big part of the second season would be in the city, near the sea. She would meet her friends who were cursed or dead in the first season. We really wanted to explore that.

“For us, the second season starts with Emma, nine months after the end of the first season. Emma is not pregnant. She has a normal belly. In her bathroom, there are a lot of pregnancy tests – all negatives. At the end of the first season, the test was positive. But after this one, there has not been another positive test, they are all negative. So maybe, she thinks, it was all in her head. During the first episode, she sleeps with a guy during a party. At this point, at the end of the first episode when she’s making love with this guy, her belly begins to grow, taking the shape of a pregnant, nine month belly.

“At the very beginning of the first episode, she received letters from a facility, saying they can help her with ‘her situation’. But, she has no situation…until her belly starts to grow. After that – ‘Okay, I need help! What do I have in my belly?!’ And Camile takes her to the facility to see what they can do for her. It started like that.”


Mireille Herbstmeyer as Mrs. Daugeron

Given the show’s title, one imagines the eponymous villain would be returning for this second season. But, wasn’t Marianne defeated in the final episode of the previous season? “Yes, she was defeated. [But she would have come back], because Emma wanted to get rid of what was in her belly. The baby, in a way, is Marianne’s baby. So Marianne haunts Emma, and follows her, saying ‘No, don’t hurt my baby.’ The whole thing about what women can do with their bodies, the liberties they have, the violence they have been subjected to for ages. It was all of this, and adoption…it would be very complicated, but we really wanted to ask those questions. We really wanted Marianne to be a feminist show, and those questions are very important for us.”

With Emma’s baby belonging to Marianne, in a way, one wonders – what of the dark figure who appeared to have fathered Emma’s baby while appearing to her as childhood friend Seby? Was that the devil? “It’s a demon. It’s a really particular demon in demonology. He lives in the city near the sea, where there are many demons. We would have met him in human form. We would love to have had a lot of demonic discussions with him. What is a demon? You can do spiritualism scenes, exorcism scenes – but when you can really talk with them, hear what they have to say, their position on everything….we wanted to dive into this mythology and talk about that.”

Speaking of Seby, how would he figure into the second season? Would Emma have continued pursuing him romantically? “No, no. Seby was just a projection of love for Emma. We hadn’t planned to see Seby again. At the beginning, we said – ‘Okay, she tried to convince herself that she loved someone.’ But in Season 2, she really falls in love with someone. We would have seen Emma really in love, and it would have been a different Emma than the one we’d seen in Season 1.”

In the first season, Emma was presented as a successful novelist, having written a number of novels starring a character named Lizzie Larck, in tales inspired by her childhood dealings with Marianne. However, Mr. Bodin notes that Emma’s abilities as a writer would have begun to fail her in the second season. “In the first season, she wanted to stop writing those stories. But it’s like a ego thing. ‘I can write something better, more sophisticated.’ When the second season starts, we realize that she has tried to write something else, but maybe she is not good enough. So she goes back to Lizzie Larck, but even what she writes [for that character] is not good enough. Her publisher tells her that it isn’t good. In the first season, it’s easy for her to write, but because maybe there is something about Marianne in that. Something Marianne gives her, in a way. So now Marianne is not here to write, and Emma struggles a lot with that. She will realize ‘Oh my God, I don’t know how to write at all.’ It’s a problem. ‘I could write in the past because I was possessed, in a way. But I don’t know how to write at all.’ So in my mind, I really wanted to make sequences with a voiceover like in the first season, but with bad [writing]. By the end of the second season, she starts to write Lizzie Larck again, but in another style. So we had to work to find a way to make the audience understand the new style, because we love to talk about literature in Marianne. It’s a part of the series.”


While the second season of Marianne wasn’t fully realized at the writing stage, one still wonders if any thought had gone into where the story would have gone even beyond Season 2, and what the overall plan for the series might have been. Where would the story of Marianne and Emma have ultimately ended up? “I have to be honest…we don’t know. When I write a TV show, I project myself into a [limited] matter of time. I say, ‘Oh, now we have a season. I really want to write three seasons, but now I have a season. I’ll put everything I have into that.’ Because when you write it and shoot it, a character can change. Their contact with reality, contact with the people with whom you will work…the series transforms. So if you project too far in any way, things will change. So I can’t tell you where we would have arrived in the third season. I have no idea.”

Mr. Bodin, who at the time of this interview was just beginning to prep production for his upcoming Lionsgate feature Cobweb, finished up our interview with his final thoughts on Marianne Season 2: “We really wanted to talk about love with a character like Emma. We really wanted to share this depiction of love with her and the audience of Marianne. It would’ve been so cool. Horror stories are always about love, in a way. When you are in love, you can be scared. Very, very much. But that is the game. We will find a way to talk about love in another story. We are already so happy to have been able to share this first season with you. To tell you this story. It’s been an opportunity and a joy. Thank you all so much!”

Very special thanks to Samuel Bodin for his time and insights.

Samuel Bodin

Editorials

Six Shot-on-VHS Horror Movies to Watch After ‘Frogman’

Published

on

Frogman VHS

Nostalgia is a funny thing. From the unexpected resurgence of vinyl to modern-day flip phones, it’s pretty clear that the technical limitations of the past can often inspire the stylish trends of the future. One of my favorite examples of this is the ongoing analog horror craze, as I find it fascinating how many of the genre’s major creators appear to have been born after the decline of VHS tapes and eerie PSAs.

It’s almost like there’s a subconscious understanding that some stories are best told through fuzzy visuals and heavily compressed audio, which is why I appreciate flicks like Anthony Cousins’s Found Footage throwback Frogman, a cryptozoology-inspired scary movie that dares to incorporate lo-fi aesthetics into its storytelling during a time when most studios encourage filmmakers to make their projects look as generically slick and polished as possible. And if you also enjoyed Frogman and are on the lookout for more VHS-based gems, Bloody-Disgusting has got you covered, as we’ve come up with a list highlighting six shot-on-VHS classics for your viewing pleasure.

As usual, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite analog thrillers if you think we missed a particularly spooky one. I’d also like to give a shout-out to Bloody-Disgusting’s own long-running V/H/S series, which won’t be included here for obvious reasons.

Now, onto the list…


6. Zero Day (2003)

School shootings are one of the scariest realities of the modern world, but the complicated political elements behind these tragedies mean that most genre filmmakers don’t even try to tell stories about them. There are a few exceptions, however, and one of the most notable is Ben Coccio’s Zero Day, a deeply uncomfortable Found Footage character study that explores just how far ill-intentioned teenagers might go to prove a point.

Inspired by the real-world Columbine Basement Tapes, in which the mass-murderers kept a record of their plans and motivations, Coccio’s film follows a fictional video diary where troubled friends Andre and Calvin discuss their homicidal intentions. Another case where the gritty visuals make the story hit even harder, I’d recommend this one for discerning fans of True Crime media.


5. August Underground (2001)

Out of all the movies on this list, Fred Vogel’s August Underground is simultaneously one of the most fascinating and the hardest to recommend. A simulated snuff film following the exploits of a degenerate serial killer and his deranged filmmaker friend, the low production value and amateurish visuals make this shot-on-video experience even more uncomfortable as you begin to question if it really is just a movie.

And while Vogel would go on to expand on this controversial production with a series of slightly more agreeable sequels that boasted improved visuals, none of the follow-ups can quite compare to the raw thrills of the original. Just make sure that you don’t accidentally pick this one for family movie night if you dare to give it a watch.


4. WNUF Halloween Special (2013)

Frogman VHS list

The only entry on this list produced after the decline of VHS-based media, this 2013 classic still holds up as a convincing masterclass in authentic period-piece horror. A simulated recording of a public access show gone terribly wrong, the WNUF Halloween Special should be on everyone’s spooky season watchlist – though I’d argue that it’s best enjoyed as a background conversation piece during Halloween parties.

From the hilarious yet extremely believable retro advertisements to the not-so-subtle hints of the satanic panic motivating the story, this is a delightful experience even if you weren’t alive back when this kind of TV was still on the air.

And if you like this one, don’t forget to check out the Out There Halloween Mega Tape, which was made by the same director.


3. The McPherson Tape (1989)

Originally made popular by bootleg copies circulating the underground VHS trading scene, there’s no discussing shot-on-video horror without bringing up one of the grandaddies of modern-day Found Footage, the legendary McPherson Tape. Also known as UFO Abduction, this homemade thriller follows a birthday party gone wrong as the Van Heese family is visited by extraterrestrials.

While the flick works better as a terrifying hoax rather than a proper movie due to its odd pacing and general lack of traditional story structure, it’s still a must-watch for Found Footage fans. Just be sure to track down the gritty original, not the 1998 remake, Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County.


2. Ghostwatch (1992)

Frogman VHS movies

The term “made-for-TV” used to carry some seriously negative connotations in the world of film, with most audiences assuming that this kind of classification meant that they were about to watch low-budget schlock unsuitable for the big screen. However, there were plenty of clever filmmakers that managed to turn the limitations of broadcast television into storytelling tools, and a great example of this is Stephen Volk’s excellent mockumentary, Ghostwatch.

Starring real TV host Sir Michael Parkinson and borrowing details from the infamous Enfield Poltergeist case, this controversial TV special attempted to do for hauntings what Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds radio adaptation did for aliens. And while we’ve seen scarier Found Footage ghost stories in the decades since Ghostwatch premiered, I’d argue that the chilling authenticity behind the production makes it well worth revisiting in 2024.


1. America’s Deadliest Home Video (1993)

Jack Perez’s pioneer POV thriller may not be that well known these days, but this obscure little gem is actually responsible for many Found Footage tropes that we now take for granted. Telling the story of an amateur cameraman who finds himself being kidnapped by a group of criminals during a road trip, this video diary from hell still holds up as a horrific example of grounded Found Footage.

While some questionable acting and convenient story beats sometimes break the carefully crafted immersion, America’s Deadliest Home Video stands out by not only being one of the first of its kind, but also by embracing its amateurish roots instead of being embarrassed by them.


Frogman, which actually was released on VHS, is now available on VOD outlets.

Continue Reading