Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mortel’ On Netflix, A French Drama Where High Schoolers Wield Voodoo Powers To Try To Save A Soul

Teens and the supernatural go together like peanut butter and jelly, as we see in one of Netflix’s biggest original hits, Stranger Things, so it’s not a surprise that the streamer is developing teen supernatural shows in other countries. Mortel is an example; it’s a French thriller where three teens come together to save a soul any way they can.

MORTEL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A tall, intimidating man with glasses that have fire in the lenses walks down the darkened halls of a high school. Then we see the lights go on and one group of teens chase another one through the halls.

The Gist: One of the teens being chased is Sofiane (Carl Malapa) who has been getting into fights and otherwise acting up since his older brother Reda (Sami Outabali) disappeared. He’s being followed around by a kid named Victor (Némo Schiffman), who is a bit of a weirdo, but he thinks he can help Sofiane with his pain. Sofiane doesn’t want the help, and he tells Victor that he can’t even get it together to kill himself. It seems like a failed suicide attempt is what Victor is known for around school.

That night, Sofiane sees the aforementioned figure with the flaming glasses in his apartment. He jumps off his balcony and is confronted by the figure in the park. He shows him a vision of Reda being tied to a tree. The figure tells Sofiane that, in order to save his brother, he needs to find someone whose death won’t be noticed. The perfect person, of course, is Victor.

Sofiane makes a date with his new girlfriend Melanie (Katie Anne RIch), but blows it off to bring Victor to the figure, who identifies himself as Obé (Corentin Fila), who tells Sofiane to kill Victor. He strangles Victor but just can’t finish it, then Obé tries to get Sofiane to jump, until Victor points out that Obé wanted a murder. That’s when Obé tells them he transports souls from earth to wherever they’re going and shows Sofiane that Reda was murdered.

He still has time to save his brother’s soul, though, and Sofiane enlists the help of Luisa (Manon Bresch), an art student who lives with her voodoo-practicing grandmother Elizabeth (Firmine Richard). Her grandmother has been fielding a lot of clients who look to her to get rid of spirits, but she feels that is bad news. “Something bad is going to happen,” she says to Luisa. Luisa tells Sofiane that what he’s asking for is dangerous. But that doesn’t stop Sofiane and Victor from making a blood pact to find Reda’s killer to give to Obé, only Sofiane is determined to save Reda’s soul and defeat Obé, with the powers gained through this blood pact.

Our Take: Mortel, created by Frédéric Garcia, is designed to be a drama where a disparate group of teens come together to defeat a supernatural enemy. But the first episode is so muddled by all the other relationships the three teenagers have that it’s hard for Garcia to get to the heart of the story.

We get a little introduction to each, mainly through exposition. Sofiana’s counselor says that his brother “ran away,” which is tough to do when you’re 18; his parents just think Reda has disappeared to do drugs somewhere. Victor cries while reading books in class and other kids tell him to go through with the suicide the next time. Luisa hates her strict art teacher, and wants to escape her grandmother’s business.

It’s strange, though, that while the first two characters got a quick scene or two to set up their story (the chase Sofiana was in at the beginning of the episode notwithstanding), Luisa gets an extended scene, as a client who has cancer looks like he’s possessed by demons until Luisa slaps it out of him. The imbalance doesn’t help establish just how different the three characters are from each other.

As we get further into the six-episode season, as Sofiane and Victor figure out their powers, we’ll find out more about them. But the first episode is a bit of a confusing start to the series.

Sex and Skin: Sofiane and Melanie have sex after he goes to her place and explains why they blew off their date. Victor, on the other hand, goes home and paints on his walls.

Parting Shot: In class, Sofiane mutters under his breath that his teacher “needs to be the one to slam his head against the wall,” and the teacher, overtaken by some trance, does just that. Victor looks at Sofiane in a “WTF?” sort of way.

Sleeper Star: Richard is fun as Lucia’s grandmother Elizabeth, who at first feels like a charlatan, but then we realize that she is a real voodoo practitioner, and she’s the only one who feels a force of evil around their neighborhood.

Most Pilot-y Line: It feels like the counselor has a relationship with Victor’s mother. And Lucia is dating Sofiana’s rival but doesn’t want him to visit her apartment because she’s likely ashamed of the voodoo stuff. Lots of complications that aren’t needed in a six-episode season.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Mortel has potential to be a fun supernatural ride, but the first episode is so muddled that it didn’t make us want to watch a second one.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Mortel On Netflix