As the opening minutes of Roku’s The Spiderwick Chronicles is all too glad to remind us, “This is a dark fairy tale.” A decidedly on-the-nose sentiment to blurt out to an audience in its beginning seconds, to be sure, but that matches the vibe of the series: A lot of spells, but very little magic. The show was rescued by Roku after Disney+ cut it in 2023 after completing the series; the move was ostensibly to cut costs, part of the streaming squeeze we’re all going through as streamers start realizing it doesn’t quite pay to firehouse out an endless stream of expensive content. But based on what we’ve seen, they may have been on to something.

Based on the early-aughts children’s fantasy novels by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi and updated by Aron Eli Coleite, the show offers a coincidentally similar premise to Coleite’s prior show, Netflix’s Locke & Key: A mom and three siblings moving to their family’s ancestral home in the wake of losing their father (here, it’s to divorce), only to find magical secrets that lie inside. In Spiderwick, that family is the Graces, each of which has their own distinct quirks but not a lot of space to develop beyond them. There are twin brothers Jared (Lyon Daniels) and Simon (Noah Cottrell), the former with mental health issues and the latter with a chip on his shoulder about leaving their dad behind. Older sister Mallory (Mychala Lee) is a fencing prodigy whose meticulous life planning may be her biggest weakness. Mother Helen (Joy Bryant) is doing her best to hold the family together, all while trying to deal with her institutionalized Aunt Lucinda (a small but powerful guest turn from Charlayne Woodard), who continually goes on about boggarts and ogres and faeries.

But based on the house they move in, the creaky, ancient Spiderwick estate, with its labyrinthine tunnels, and the large tree that grows in the middle of the foyer, there may be something to Aunt Lucinda’s mutterings (and, it turns out, Jared’s visions). Turns out their relative, Arthur Spiderwick (Arthur Jones), spent his life chronicling the fantastical creatures and artifacts he came across in his varying travels, collecting them all in a Field Guide that the kids happen upon not too far into the series. Trouble is, they’re not the only ones looking for the guide: maniacal ogre Mulgarath (Christian Slater) wants it too, and for hardly altruistic reasons.

Fans of the books may be sorely disappointed, as Coleite seems to take the basic skeleton of the book’s story as a loose framework for a kids-handling-magic-and-trauma story that tackles many of its own issues rather than straightforwardly adapting its source material. The show’s eight episodes are handsomely presented, mind you, especially on a presumably low-for-its-ambition streaming budget: director Kat Coiro builds a suitably whimsical style for the show to build on in its first two episodes, and the production design of the Spiderwick House is impressive. But the CG effects leave a bit to be desired, especially when we’re treated to a quirky brownie named Thimbletack (voiced by Jack Dylan Grazer), an annoying, rhyming sprite who moves like a cheap insurance commercial mascot from the 2000s. (In fact, most of the magical characters, from faeries to ogres, maintain a human appearance for most of the show, an unfortunate consequence of the budget that makes the show feel that much cheaper.)

That doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker if the cast can elevate the material, but there’s only so much they can do with the clunky dialogue they’re given. Daniels and Cottrell get the worst of it, especially the former, as he has to work overtime to sell Jared’s contrived struggles with his identity and outsiderdom. (Interestingly enough, the show makes hay out of a Black family, presumably with a neurodivergent child, moving into a conservative area of the Midwest, only for that to never really become an issue throughout the series. If we’re going to touch on issues of prejudice and marginalization, it would probably be better to thread that throughout the series more than a single puppet show about humanity’s broad penchant for self-destruction.) Still, Mychala Lee imbues Mallory with no small sense of naturalism, her quest for self-actualization taking an interesting angle we don’t often see: the overachiever who has to learn to let go of control.

The standout of the cast, of course, is Slater, who at least runs with the one-note sniveling Mulgarath’s role requires. He’s having fun, plying his signature raspy voice and Cheshire-cat grin to sell the maliciousness of a manipulator who ingratiates himself to his potential targets in one moment and yells at customer service on the phone in the next. It’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s nice to see an old hand tear into lackluster material and elevate it to something approaching camp. There’s always been something lupine about Slater as a performer, so it’s always a delight to see him play a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Shame, then, that the show stumbles when he’s not on screen. The Stranger Things-y antics with the Grace kids and their reluctant friend group (Momona Tamada also stands out as Jared’s snarky friend Emiko) feel repetitive and slow, and the adult drama involving Helen grows especially tiresome. Entire episodes are spent repeating the truism that Jared is mentally “broken,” and the family’s respective conflicts ring with the falseness of melodrama.

For a story so dedicated to the power of imagination, The Spiderwick Chronicles is sorely lacking in it. Its structure is sluggish and dreary, the creatures are disappointing to look at when they actually appear, and the plot beats feel ripped from a million other works even outside its YA source material. It doesn’t feel loyal enough to the books to win over book lovers (there’s a decently successful 2008 film adaptation for that), and the changes morph it into a dull streaming-era kids’ series that doesn’t stand out from the pack enough to draw in new viewers. If Roku thought they could piggyback off a Disney+ budget to pull a new tentpole fantasy series for kids, they might want to invest elsewhere in the future.

All episodes of The Spiderwick Chronicles are currently streaming on The Roku Channel.

The Spiderwick Chronicles Trailer: