‘Locke & Key’ Review: Welcome To Your Next Netflix Obsession

I’m going to be honest up front here, because I’ve been staring at a blank page for a lot longer than I would like, trying to come up with a way of encapsulating my feelings about Locke & Key. I also realize that nobody really wants to read my personal experiences with a book before they get into the meat of this piece, the actual review for Netflix’s Locke & Key, so don’t worry, you can skip a couple of paragraphs ahead. Or, here’s the tl;dr version: I loved the first season of Netflix’s Locke & Key adaptation, which brilliantly skirts the line between horror, drama, comedy and dark fantasy the comics by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez helped innovate.

But my issue here is that I feel closer to Locke & Key than almost any other series I’ve read — and I’ve read a lot of comic books. Before I was covering television full time, comics were my passion, they were how I got into entertainment journalism. And around the same time I lucked into covering them professionally, the first issue of Hill and Rodriguez’s Locke & Key was published by IDW, way back in 2008. I came to that issue a little late; it had already sold out the Wednesday it came out in comic book stores, but I was able to snag an issue a week later. When I cracked the first page, I didn’t know much about it other than it was hyped by the other members of the comic book press.

Hill, at the time, was best known as a novelist, while Rodriguez had been working his way up through IDW drawing CSI comics, among other assignments. Given Hill’s prose background, and the relative lack of hype around Rodriguez, coming into issue one there was no way of knowing what to expect.

It only took that first issue to fall in love. The story kicks off with a grim, bloody attack by a kid named Sam Lesser, as he murders Locke family patriarch Rendell. The Locke family subsequently moves to Rendell’s old home, Keyhouse, and the youngest kid, Bode, discovers a magical key that allows him to become a ghost.

Beyond the simple set up and stakes of the series, I was immediately impressed that Hill leaned into the comic book form — and as the series continued, the team played with that form, with issues inspired by Calvin & Hobbes, or epic superhero fights, while threading the ongoing mysteries and character drama throughout. It was the quiet moments, though, that made it sing. A sequence where oldest child Tyler Locke sits in a hallway outside his father’s funeral while other characters try to talk to him to pay respects is powerfully and beautifully done; and even more important than the magical keys, or what is ultimately revealed to be an evil entity named Dodge who lives near Keyhouse, and is looking for one key, in particular.

That’s the heart of Locke & Key, the secret sauce that makes it work, and puts it on par with the best of horror fantasy… It’s about a family dealing with grief and loss, and everything else revolves around that. Every member of the Locke family blames themselves for what happened to Rendell in different ways: Tyler thinks he caused it; Kinsey, the middle kid, hid when she thinks she should have fought; Nina, the mother is dealing with her own secret pain and using alcohol to numb herself. Only Bode seems immune, able to use his childlike innocence to discover these keys and help his family heal.

From that point on, I was hooked. I obsessively read every issue, interviewed Hill and Rodriguez multiple times, and even spent time with the duo in Florida building a mini-documentary as they wrapped up the final volume of the series. And in the interest of full disclosure, I was honored to “cameo” in the fourth volume of the book, when Rodriguez drew me in as a bit character during a hospital scene.

Though in my mind the comics have always been the main event, in the background there’s been near constant news about an adaptation of Locke & Key. There have been attempts at a movie, a movie trilogy, a scrapped Fox pilot, and a scrapped Hulu pilot. As my career has progressed and shifted from comics to TV, I’ve covered nearly every aspect of the process, each time hoping this would be when we’d see Hill and Rodriguez’s vision on the screen.

To reemphasize: I realize all of this is indulgent. You didn’t come here to read the equivalent of an online recipe, with 700+ words of windup about how my day went before I finally get to the ingredients for my killer queso dip. But I do think it’s important to disclose that I was very much in the tank for Locke & Key before I watched a single frame of the series.

There’s another side to the equation, though, that I touched on earlier… While Hill’s story is easily distillable down to a pitch line recognizable to any horror fan — family suffers tragedy, moves to creepy house, discovers magic and monsters there — Locke & Key is intrinsically tied to the comic book form. There’s the aforementioned Calvin & Hobbes issue, of course; but it goes far deeper than that, and points to at least one of the reasons the property has struggled to make it to screen for 12 years. Like another beloved comic book, Watchmen, Locke & Key is a comic book story told through the form of a comic book, a surprising rarity in the industry.

Scenes like the one of Tyler at the funeral come to mind, with the “camera” fixed and Tyler nearly unmoving for two pages of panels. There’s a moment when Dodge emerges from a well behind Bode that is the only time I’ve actually jumped in fear at a comic book, and it’s all because of Rodriguez’s panel layout. Same with a page where two of our heroes walk on a staircase landing, not knowing the villain is hiding just below them in darkness.

Throughout the six volumes (and assorted one-shots) of Locke & Key, Hill and Rodriguez consistently push themselves to focus on telling a story that works over the course of the collected editions, but also individually for each 20-ish page long issue. It’s a comic book series that was always meant to be a comic book, and slapping that without changes up on TV would remove a huge chunk of the magic of why Locke & Key works.

Arguably, that’s why the Fox pilot didn’t work. I saw it during a special screening at San Diego Comic-Con after the network had passed on the series (and it does occasionally pop up — illegally — online). It’s beautifully directed by Mark Romanek, and captures multiple iconic images from the book; but it also whips through the first six issues of the series in record time. The plan reportedly was to focus on a magical “key of the week” after that if the series had been picked up, but simply repeating the images on screen was more akin to what director Zack Snyder did with his big-screen version of Watchmen. It looks right, for sure. But it also loses something in translation, particularly when you have a property that is at least partially about analyzing the comic book art form, in order to see how it works.

Like HBO’s recent take at Watchmen, which sequel-ized and remixed that book, turning the nine episode long season into an analysis of superheroes in TV and movies the same way Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ book analyzed superhero comics, so does Carlton Cuse, Meredith Averill and Aron Eli Coleite’s take on Locke & Key remix the material and flesh it out to make it work for TV. What ultimately makes the Netflix series work is that it’s respectful of the source material (and of note, they worked closely with Hill on this first season), while not being afraid to make changes so it can live as a TV series, on its own.

A closer analogue is, perhaps, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which liberally picks characteristics from the comics while concentrating on creating film versions that aren’t beholden to their four color origins. In that way, the characters you see on screen in Locke & Key are completely recognizable to fans of the comics, even if they don’t look exactly the same. Darby Stanchfield as Nina Locke is still a woman broken beyond repair, even if she doesn’t have Nina’s chin-length black hair. Connor Jessup’s Tyler Locke doesn’t wear his signature hat, nor is he as impossibly broad as Tyler is on the page; but the deep emotional damage he pushes down under bro-style good humor seeps through every pore.

And the thrust of the first season is essentially the same as the set-up for the comics: Rendell is still murdered, the family still moves to Massachusetts (though now to the town of Matheson, instead of Lovecraft), they discover some magical keys, and Dodge wants to catch ’em all. For the most part, the first episode “Welcome to Matheson” follows the touch points from the first volume pretty closely.

From there, though, things almost immediately start to differ, thanks to events moved earlier in the timeline from the books, characters remixed, and new elements added. And frankly, the series is better for it. Rather than walking fans through a story they already knew, beat for beat, by the time you reach the end of the first hour Locke & Key is in new, exciting territory, thanks to new magical keys, and a mystery element that brings Nina Locke deeper into the fold.

Before we get to all that, though, let’s talk about the general tone. Locke & Key isn’t, nor has it ever been, a strict horror story, and that’s what writers Joe Hill and Aron Eli Coleite and director Michael Morris capture in the first episode, and the rest of the writers and directors play out throughout the season. In Netflix terms, if you think Haunting of Hill House meets Stranger Things, with a dash of classic Amblin Entertainment adventures, you get the gist. It’s more in the realm of dark fantasy, than strict horror; less Stephen King, than Steven Spielberg. The chilly climes of Toronto (standing in for Massachusetts) add to the feel, as does the look of the town and Keyhouse, which is as much a character in the show as any other.

As Bode (Jackson Robert Scott) runs around discovering keys, the show trends much more towards treasure hunt epics like Goonies than the ghastly scares of Hill House. But those scares are there, thanks to some terrifying designs late in the season — the choice of director Vincenzo Natali, who directs episodes late in the season and is known for horror, probably doesn’t hurt, either.

However, it’s much more focused on the wonder and excitement of these keys than inspiring jump scares. For fans of horror, that might be a bummer; but if you’re looking for an adventure show that skews a little older than Stranger Things, Locke & Key is exactly what you’ve been waiting for. At the very least, those of us missing the darker adventures of the ’80s and ’90s — the aforementioned Goonies, plus Gremlins and others — should feel right at home with this show.

Okay, back to the characters.

Nina has always existed on the periphery of the story, by design… Adults are often not included in magical goings-on in these sorts of tales. So what the team does here in order to give her more autonomy over her own destiny is weave an ongoing mystery for her: why did Rendell die, and what connection does it have to what happened to him in high school? Rather than heading to Keyhouse for just a fresh start, this Nina has a mission, a purpose, and that plays to actress Darby Stanchfield’s strengths. It also allows Stanchfield to hit dramatic highs late in the season, as she continues to struggle with the seemingly inexplicable attacks on her family.

The whole family, in fact, nails the essence of their characters from the books. Jessup looks like a bro, but carries the weight of his own intelligence and emotional intuition right below the surface. Emilia Jones’ Kinsey is all raw nerves, played like a raccoon freezing in the light once discovered, until she gains control of her own situation in a surprising way. And the break out star is Jackson Robert Scott as young Bode. Probably best known as the yellow raincoated Georgie from IT, Scott’s high, squeaky voice and hopeful delivery perfectly capture fan favorite Bode. He’s by turns hilarious (a bit in the first episode about the middle finger is an instant classic), authoritative, and  exactly the kind of kid you would follow to the ends of the Earth if he told you there were some cool magical keys to find.

The rest of the cast is similarly strong. Sherri Saum makes the most of her expanded role as Matheson Academy teacher Ellie Whedon, a woman balancing too much while hiding secrets from her past with Rendell. Coby Bird, playing her son Rufus, brings the right amount of earnest intensity to the role, and he clearly forms an instant bond with Scott’s Bode.

And then there’s the bad guys. Laysla De Oliveira jumps ably from languid malevolence to rage-filled authority as Dodge, a.k.a. the woman in the well. And Thomas Mitchell Barnet adds broken anger and pathos to Sam Lesser, a murderer you hate immediately while still understanding that deep down, there’s a human being inside.

There are more additions to the cast, including the delightful, horror nerd “Savinis” who befriend Kinsey — played by Asha Bromfield, Petrice Jones and Jesse Camacho — and riff endlessly on the increasing weirdness in their town. Griffin Gluck is also charming as a new kid in town named Gabe; Eric Graise pleasantly engaging as Logan, a kid who befriends Tyler; and Hallea Jones is pitch perfect as mean girl Eden Hawkins. Bill Heck also brings gravity in flashbacks to the untimely murdered Rendell Locke, a role that’s considerably fleshed out in this adaptation. There are more, but the main point here is the production takes the relatively tight cast list of the comics and expands it outwards, allowing more room for engagingly scripted drama throughout that will also help expand the length of the life of the show.

Even better, the cast is so good as a whole that even when it takes breaks from the ongoing conflict and the magic keys, it’s still completely engaging. That’s the main lesson the TV show takes from the comics, and well: make you care about the characters first and foremost; mess ’em up with some magic keys later.

Also transitioning well from comics to TV are several elements that, over a decade later, are more problematic than they may have seemed at the time. That includes changing the name of the town from Lovecraft to Matheson, but also the treatment of certain character’s plotlines, and even the powers of some of the keys. Many creators would feel locked into their original story; here, Hill has helped the TV show come up with creative solutions that feel true to the book, while in many ways improving on what is currently there.

Another small note that helps Locke & Key succeed? The running time. It seems like a ridiculous consideration, but many modern streaming shows overstay their welcome. Not Locke & Key. Though the first episode is a deserved, nearly hour long; the subsequent nine are all under fifty minutes. It’s a tighter, leaner season of supernatural drama that makes for an easy, fun binge; but also leaves you wanting much, much more.

And that, in essence, is what I’m most excited about with the premiere of Locke & Key. As someone who has loved the books for so long, the TV show doesn’t feel like a replacement for the books, it feels like an additional chapter, or an alternate take. They’re two stories titled Locke & Key, with enough similarities to please fans of both, and enough differences to make the book and TV show satisfying for fans of either. Locke & Key is poised to be the next big Netflix obsession, and rightly so. Happily, it’s going to leave viewers hungry to continue the story, and the excellent comics are right there for the taking. Welcome to Keyhouse, everyone. You’ve just unlocked a whole new world of excitement.

Locke & Key premieres February 7 on Netflix.

Stream Locke & Key on Netflix