Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Innocents’ On Netflix Is A Dreamy Love Story

They say falling in love is hard to do, but it’s even harder if you discover that your perfect girlfriend is actually a shapeshifter. Netflix’s new supernatural romance The Innocents is a dreamy fantasy of young love, complete with, yes, a girl who can “shift” into the form of other people. Is this the next Twilight or is it a total letdown?

THE INNOCENTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We open on a lush, verdant, mountain landscape. Two figures in grey are running over the rocks and hills. We cut to a close up of Guy Pearce’s character chasing after a desperate bearded man. He pursues him to the edge of a cliff. The man stops and looks down in dread, uncertain if he should jump. When he shuts his eyes, we get a montage of needles and memories, all starring a blonde woman. “Please don’t do this,” Pearce’s character says before pulling the man from the cliff.

The Gist: Beautiful teenagers Harry (Percelle Ascott) and June (Sorcha Groundsell) are madly in love with each other and planning to run away from their dreary lives together. Harry is stuck caring for his sick dad while June’s (adopted) father is plotting to carry her off to a secluded place in Scotland. The two believe that June’s father is being unreasonable, but that’s only because they don’t know that June, like her mother, is a “shifter,” aka shapeshifter.

June’s mother Elena (Laura Birn) abruptly left the family years ago and is currently part of an experimental colony called “Sanctum,” run by Guy Pearce’s character Halvorson. Sanctum is where Halvorson has been conducting tests on a handful of shifters, all ethereally beautiful blonde women with haunting eyes, but it’s unclear what his motivation is.

After Harry and June are on the road, Halvorson sends his muscle, Steiner (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), to pick up June, and a fight ensues that almost leaves Steiner dead. After the teens are safely at a motel, June sneaks back to check on the man. When she arrives, she touches him and morphs into him. Frightened, she returns to the motel, where she must convince a horrified Harry that she is his June and not a scary man with a beard.

Our Take: I am extraordinarily confused by The Innocents. This first episode is so dreamy, so effervescently earnest, and so beautiful that I want it to take me away, like Harry does for June. However, it is one of the slowest moving pilots I have ever seen on Netflix — and I have seen a lot of plodding stories on this particular streaming service.

After the dynamite opening scene, everything slows down to a glacial pace. On the one hand, the scenes with Harry and June benefit from this. There’s a scene where he looks at her from the back of a school bus, and she coyly looks back at him from her stepfather’s SUV that is slow and sweet in the good way…like honey. However, any scene with a supporting character grinds this seductive tone to a halt. Every scene without Harry and June lacks a ferocity of spirit. The writing comes across as simple, the characters, well, are boring. I sighed, reader. I sighed more than once. I kept waiting for the show to get to the point.

That said, I can’t sing the praises of Percelle Ascott and Sorcha Groundsell enough. The two of them are the perfect tortured lovers. They manage to sell you on the idea that their love is not just passionate, but pure. The rest of the episode? I mean…it’s pretty, but there’s not much else there.

Sex and Skin: There’s not really much sex to speak of in the pilot. June and Harry’s romance is perfectly pure. It’s all kisses and letters and shy smiles.

Parting Shot: After barging into their motel room, June-as-Steiner grabs Harry and makes him look in the mirror. The reflection reveals him to be June grasping Harry desperately. June’s mouth moves with Steiner’s voice: “Harry, it’s me! It’s me.”

Sleeper Star: Besides Ascott and Groundsell, I was struck by Finnish actress Laura Birn. She plays Elena, June’s tortured mother, stuck in Sanctum and maybe a little bit attuned to the fact that all is not well. She’s got a rebellious streak that shows itself in the smallest of twitches.

Most Pilot-y Line: “You’re never gonna get me on that boat.” “You’re going, Ryan. If I have to drag you the whole way. If not for me, then for your sister.” “June is all I care about. You want to lock her up because Mum got away. You’re a disease killing our family.” “JUST SHUT UP FOR ONCE! You have to trust me. When we-” Okay, nevermind. I’ll stop transcribing an entire scene. You get the idea. The whole pilot is full of awkward bits of basic dialogue.

Our Call: I hate to say this, but I think you should Skip It. Its languid pace made me yearn for another, better Netflix sci-fi show, The Rain.

Where to Stream The Innocents