Let's start with the fact that this is not a series by the Duffer Brothers, as many people on the internet claim. Yes, the creators of "Stranger Things" and their studio Upside Down Pictures worked on it, but only as producers — they were not showrunners, did not write scripts, and did not sit in the director's chair. That's just for the record. And that's probably all you need to know about the series.

Because extra information only hurts here. Just take my word for it — if you love horror, this thing is definitely worth your attention. Even more: not just love it, but know it well, are familiar with genres, and the term "meta-horror" doesn't sound like something nerdy to you. So stop right here and don't read further.

You shouldn't have done that, of course. Okay, let's be honest. "I Have a Very Bad Feeling" is a structure maximally vulnerable to spoilers, and you risk spoiling not so much the plot as the viewing experience. That was the last warning.

But since you stayed, I'll allow myself to continue. This is indeed a meta-horror, but without reflection on the genre directly in the frame, like "Scream" or "The Cabin in the Woods." It's a story that constantly changes its own genre: from gothic to folk, from social horror to found footage, from psychological to mystical and back. And watching the series constantly switch tracks, turning the plot trolley from one rail to another, is almost the main pleasure of watching.

Such "genre fluidity" (sorry, I just made that up, already regretting it) is easily mistaken for authorial inexperience, which is exactly what happens with those same people on the internet. Like, "I Have a Very Bad Feeling" tries to be all horrors at once and doesn't succeed at any. All this comes with an obvious joke about the title.

Nonsense. It succeeds just fine. Compare, for example, the main character's perspective in the first and second episodes. After some creepy circumstances are explained by other creepy circumstances, she begins to see the same people completely differently. Micro-motor skills, dialogues, color grading — everything comes into play.

At the same time, the trolley, though it wobbles between tracks, never deviates from the main course: from the first to the last frame, it remains a metaphor for the bride's pre-wedding jitters — with all the anxieties, doubts, paranoia, and fear of making a mistake in the most important decision of life.

And you have a much less fateful decision ahead. The series is not a wedding: you can always bail out halfway and pretend nothing happened.

#watched_the_series