March is evidently the month for projects to draft off of Ready or Not vibes. Obviously, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is the purest reinterpretation of the formula. They Will Kill You picks up the original’s “one woman against a building full of rich, murderous, very into Satan types” plot. The new Netflix original series from Haley Z. Boston, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, gets the bad, vaguely supernatural wedding vibes.

A week before their wedding, Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nick (Adam DiMarco) are on a road trip. They’re making the long trek out to his family’s vacation cabin, where the nuptials will go down. Along the way, things are already feeling off. There’s a seemingly abandoned baby in a rest stop parking lot in the middle of a snowy night. Rachel overhears friends discussing an obviously abusive situation in a local diner. Nick tells the blood-drenched story of the fall of a frozen custard business, only for Rachel to start to see the ruins of that empire along the highway. And worst of all, a man peeps on Rachel in a nearly desolate bar bathroom before demanding if she knows for sure that Nick is the man she should marry.

Things get worse when they get to the cabin, which turns out to be anything but humble. Like Ready or Not’s Grace, Rachel grew up without much of a family and is excited to become part of Nick’s. And they’re not unwelcoming, per se, but the vibes are immediately off. Nick’s mom, Victoria (a very in-the-pocket Jennifer Jason Leigh), often feels like she’s in a different place. She wanders the cabin at night in a state somewhere between sleepwalking and something else. When she does interact, her dialogue feels rife with either prophecy or good-old-fashioned “you know you aren’t good enough for my son, right?” mother aggression. Dad, Boris (Ted Levine), taxidermies to relax—paging Norman Bates—and is largely absent. Until he’s not.

The siblings aren’t much better. Nick’s older brother, Jules (Jeff Wilbusch), married Nick’s ex-fiancée, Nell (Karla Crome). Nell doesn’t seem quite cool with having lost Nick, while Jules is a different kind of off-putting.  Portia (Gus Birney), Nick’s sister, is a heady mix of bubbly and passive-aggressive, especially when she tells the story of a local (or is it just family?) legend, the Sorry Man. He apparently waits out in the woods around the cabin for anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves stuck there after dark. Family lore has it that Jules survived such an encounter, although the consequences of that might explain his constant creepiness.

All of this has Rache understandably on edge. Then her wedding dress goes missing, the story of her meet-cute with Nick unravels, and her own family lore rises to the surface. What she once anticipated as one of the happiest moments of her life has gone wildly off the rails.

There’s something paradoxically challenging about Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. On the one hand, its first half is a dread-drenched atmospheric creep fest where almost nothing happens. On the other, when the plot momentum kicks in, a lot of that wonderful atmosphere falls away, abandoning the vibes it took hours to build. Neither half is wholly satisfying, and awkwardly stitching them together doesn’t resolve that tension.

Morrone is an excellent central protagonist. Even though much of the series puts her on the defensive, reacting to weirdness or weirdos, she never feels especially passive. Her eyes can go from sleepy confusion to alert vigilance in a moment, a skill she greatly utilizes across a number of settings that feel like walking nightmares. Frequently, the best thing in projects like Daisy Jones & the Six, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen gives her the kind of lead role she’s grown to deserve. DiMarco, in his coddled, implacable way, makes for a good partner and foil for her. He’s the sort of reliable guy who you just know is going to fall apart when most needed, a vibe he already perfected on White Lotus.

The show’s design is also incredible. Even as the atmosphere the first four episodes worked so hard to establish begins to crumble, the production design remains on point. The cabin is obviously the big winner in this case, but the brief time we spend on the road with the soon-to-be newlyweds is equally meticulous.

The ending, as well, deserves its fair share of praise. It feels uncompromising without being nihilistic. And, if one is inclined to dig deeper, there is a hopeful metaphor buried within it; a hint that, despite it all, the future is strangely bright. And brightness in the world of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is a very rare commodity indeed.

All of the good makes the series’ inability to integrate its vibes and its plot mechanisms all the more frustrating. This is a show right on the edge of great that this critic has no choice but to ultimately grade as mostly just ok. All the ingredients are on the table. They just fell apart in the mixing. Put another way, it’s an impeccably planned wedding that falls apart on the day. Points for the elements, but it still didn’t go well.

Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is currently happening on Netflix.

Something Very Bad is Going to Happen Trailer: