If you are new to Locke & Key like I am, it might feel like a mishmash of Stranger Things, It and the Haunting of Hill House. Set in a strange mansion with many secrets, it focuses on the Locke household, who are all dealing with loss in their own way. Soon however, they find themselves on the defensive as supernatural forces start colliding with their lives.
Rendell Locke’s family has relocated to the Key House, with widow Nina (Darby Stanchfield) trying to leave her past behind her. Eldest son Tyler (Connor Jessup) is haunted over the possibility that he somehow caused his father’s death, while daughter Kinsey (Emilia Jones) has withdrawn into herself. Their younger brother Bode (Jackson Robert Scott from It) is slightly less affected, and he soon delves fully into the house’s mysteries when he starts finding magical keys. Things start taking a turn for the worse when a mysterious woman called Dodge starts antagonizing the family as she searches for the keys herself.
As much as the show benefits from the blend between fantasy and mundane teenage worries, it also feels, at times, overtly familiar.
Early on the show, Bode is our only perspective into the magical keys, and he often comes off as annoying instead of endearing. The threads following the romances brewing up in Tyler and Kinsey’s lives also feel a little played out.
The show often touches on the importance and nature of memories. Kinsey, for instance, is haunted by her inability to act during a traumatic encounter in her previous home. We later travel into her mind, which takes the form of a mall lined with walls full of candies which hold her memories. There are other fantastical elements at play that have the potential to invoke wonder and excitement, but mostly make you feel the echoes of joy you felt when you watched Harry Potter more than a decade ago.
Much of the story is connected to trauma, but it’s treated with a light touch that squanders storytelling potential.
There’s an interesting thread where Kinsey gets rid of her fear using a key, and another where Nina starts drinking again and starts noticing the strange things happening in her house, but they aren’t explored as deeply as they could have been.
Mind you, Locke & Key never wanders into unpleasant territory throughout the first season’s ten episode run, but it’s also spooky in a family friendly way, that’s a far cry from the original horror comic series helmed by Joe Hill (who is Stephen King’s son and has a cameo in the last episode). The series has long suffered in development hell, going through two rejected pilots before being finally picked up by Netflix, who reworked the series from scratch.
As a result, the show feels, ultimately, like another product on the Netflix brand block, calibrated to fit between the likes of Stranger Things and Sex Education. However, the show feels like a weaker version of those properties, rather than a strong and unique mold of its own. It’s coming of age theme, in particular, feels like an intimately familiar retread. In fact, I found myself inexplicably exhausted during the first episode. Not this again, is what I was probably thinking.
The ending leaves plenty of room to explore in the future; since reports indicate that Netflix has already approved the second and third season, we are probably going to see the Lockes return sooner than later. Like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina before it, maybe it will find more of a unique identity in the future and carve out its own niche.
