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Dear reader, now that you are here, I am going to have to assume that you’ve already seen the horror show ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’, since this is an opinion piece that is going to be laden with story spoilers. But just in case you didn’t, let me drop a detailed plot synopsis of the series in the next para, and those who’ve seen it, can skip the section.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen Plot
The story follows Camila Morrone as primary protagonist Rachel, a beautiful young woman, on a road trip with her fiance Nicky (Adam DiMarco). They are headed to Nicky’s home, where they are set to be married. But along the way, weird things keep happening, and a stranger creepily asks Rachel if she is sure Nicky is her soul-mate.
Once she gets to Nicky’s place, his wealthy family does nothing to make her feel at ease, and with each passing minute, she cannot help but think that something very bad is going to happen. In-fact, she starts to wonder if Nicky’s family is planning to kill her off, or sacrifice her in some twisted ritual.
What really happens in the end
The second half of ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’ reveals that Rachel’s family is cursed: if the person they are marrying is not their true soulmate, they will bleed to death on their wedding day. The only way to avoid this fate is to call off the marriage and pass the curse onto their fiancé’s bloodline. Unfair? Absolutely. But it is a curse, after all. The person who transfers it doesn’t escape punishment either, they are condemned to eternal life as a witness, forced to attend the weddings of the newly doomed family.
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One of the show’s stronger choices is Rachel’s refusal to blindly accept the story. Just because an old man claims to have passed the curse onto her family and insists he has watched generations of weddings end in tragedy doesn’t mean she believes him. Determined to uncover the truth, she sneaks into a local government office and discovers that several of her relatives really did die on their wedding days. Multiple death certificates serves as hard proof.
Desperate to avoid bleeding to death in her wedding gown, Rachel turns to a witch’s solution: a grotesque concoction made from parts of herself and her fiancé, supposedly capable of transforming him into her true soulmate. She is convinced Nicky is the one for her, but doesn’t want to leave anything to chance. Unfortunately, a series of events eventually makes her realize that he may not be worth all the suffering she has endured.
In the end, Rachel refuses to marry him, causing the curse to pass to the Cunningham family and triggering a gruesome bloodbath among Nicky’s relatives. However, Nicky forcibly completes the wedding vows and marries Rachel anyway, seemingly ensuring that she suffers the curse’s consequences as well.
‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’ initially encourages viewers to assume that Rachel’s death simply confirms the curse has transferred to the Cunninghams without sparing her. But because she ultimately chose to reject Nicky, she awakens after death as the curse’s newest witness, now expected to spend eternity watching generations of Cunninghams walk down the aisle and bleed to death on their wedding days.
Why the ending is not a bad deal for Rachel
It took me a few days to finish ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’. The first few episodes felt overly pretentious, and I simply could not bring myself to like Nicky. If anything, his family is even worse, and Nicky puts in zero effort to make Rachel feel at ease with his family. So the first few episodes are challenging to watch, because you do not want to root for this couple. But it’s the show’s final episodes and twists that make sticking around feel worthwhile.
In most horror stories, Rachel would have died for good. Instead, she becomes the curse’s newest witness: eternal, untouchable, and free from the Cunninghams. Without the supernatural intervention, she likely would’ve married Nicky and spent years trapped in a relationship that was already beginning to crack.
One of the most revealing moments comes in Episode 5 of ‘Something Very Bad is Going to Happen’. Rachel enthusiastically retells the story of how she and Nicky met at an airport, describing how he comforted her during a severe panic attack and offers to drive with her to their destination city. To her, it’s the ultimate meet-cute.
Then Nicky’s brother pieces together the timeline and realizes what really happened: Nicky skipped his own brother’s wedding to spend time with Rachel because he had recently broken up with his ex and didn’t want to attend alone. The contrast is darkly comical and of course a little bit heartbreaking. Rachel sees a romantic origin story; Nicky appears to have stumbled into the relationship while looking for a distraction. “Am I a rebound!?” Rachel fumes.
But trust women to ignore red flags, because even after all that, Rachel still forgives Nicky and continues with the wedding plans. It is only at the altar, after she delivers a heartfelt speech about their relationship, that she finally reaches her breaking point. Nicky misreads her words as a sign that marriage is unnecessary and refuses to ‘yes’ to her at the altar, shocking everybody.
Rachel just can’t wrap her head around how he can so grossly misread her, just when she spent the last few days desperately trying to find ways to ensure she can get married to him. And well, ultimately, the series serves as a dark metaphor, or a sort of a modern twisted fable against the perils of committing yourself to the wrong person.
Sure, by the end of ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’, Rachel loses her life, but she also escapes a future tied to a man who repeatedly disappoints her. Becoming the curse’s witness may sound like a punishment, yet compared to spending eternity with Nicky and his insufferable family, it almost feels like an upgrade.
She gets to be the cool witness who haunts the Cunninghams for generations to come, popping up at weddings and asking nervous brides and grooms, “Are you sure he or she is the one?” After all, unlike Rachel, they won’t know that something very bad is about to happen if they marry the wrong person.
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is on Netflix.
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