First Kill – Season 1 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2022

Contains spoilers

This Netflix series ran for eight episodes and, I have to admit, whilst on my watchlist I didn’t go immediately to it. When I did, I broke off and went back to it later (which doesn’t bode well for this review, I realise) and by the time I finished watching it the series had already been denied a second season and had been cancelled. I’m sorry to say that, despite some good things going for it, I can’t say I was surprised.

Calliope and Juliette

The series follows two main characters – Juliette Fairmont (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Calliope Burns (Imani Lewis, Vampires Vs the Bronx), known as Cal. They go to the same school, where Cal is the new girl and Juliette has a crush on her. Juliette is taking pills provided by her family to stave off symptoms as she heads towards her first kill – she is a born vampire. Cal, we discover, is from a family of monster hunters just moved by the hunter’s guild into the area.

staked

At a party, when they get to the point of their first kiss Juliette loses control and bites Cal as Cal stakes her. As things go, Juliette ends up fine – she is a Legacy Vampire, descended from Lilith and her grandmother (Polly Draper) is head of the matriarchal clans and protector of the serpent (presumably from Eden). So, Legacy Vampires can go in sunlight and are pretty much immortal, only silver proves an issue in that it burns. Cal’s bite marks vanish as a Legacy’s bite heals almost immediately.

Imani Lewis as Cal

The two girls draw close, despite it all (though Cal’s family believe that it is due to the bite, which ties victim to vampire), but it becomes clear that there are true feelings. Just in case we didn’t get the obvious analogy of star-crossed lovers from warring families, with one of them called Juliette, the programme lays it on thick with the school staging Romeo and Juliet. The great thing about this show, however, beyond the queer basis with a strong Black lead, was the chemistry between the two leads – it was believable.

Sarah Catherine Hook as Juliette

What was less believable was the world building. The viewer assumption was this was an urban fantasy where the supernatural is hidden from view (indeed, Juliette’s DA father (Will Swenson) and her sister (Gracie Dzienny) spend time hiding feeds) and the Burns family are unique in understanding the threat. Later there is a movement against monsters and we discover this is a world where monsters are well known and the town, at one point, was overrun and people couldn’t leave their homes at night. This felt bolted on and people reactions seemed false, therefore, not fitting the espoused paradigm. Indeed, late in the series the town has a shelter order, unless you happen to be characters going to a bar for plot related reasons, apparently. There is a feel of soap opera that cheapens the affair.

stretched mouth

What really let this down was the effects, however. The worst moment – a character eats another and we see the widening of a jaw, green eyes bits of cgi blood but no actual event. I get the budget might not spread that far but, if you are going to do it then you should consider how you’ll show it. A Korean series would have put the act on screen. I could have lived with the show cutting to black, after an approach of one character to another and then referencing but the noise, the non-dynamic nature of the scene – it was poor filmmaking and shows a lack of awareness of horror/the supernatural. Add to that awful CGI monsters that were clearly matted post-production and ill-textured, which doesn’t help either.

poorly matted cgi

That this is a doomed romance at heart wasn’t the part that put me off this – in fact that was the best aspect of the whole series. It was the ineptitude around the supernatural genre, the poor CGI, the poor world building etc. This might have had the best of intentions, and I get that budgets can be tight, but it just didn’t get there and the shame is that the two leads deserved a much stronger vehicle as they actually shone bright. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.