Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Burn The House Down’ On Netflix, About A Woman Who Plots Revenge Against The Woman Who Ruined Her Family’s Lives

Revenge plots are always good fodder for salacious dramas, and a new Netflix series from Japan is no exception. It involves a woman who goes back to where her childhood home once stood, all in a scheme to bring down the woman she thinks ruined her family’s lives.

BURN THE HOUSE DOWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A drone shot of a house on fire, with first responders speeding towards the scene.

The Gist: As we see the house burning, and a 12-year-old girl running towards it, her mother is prostrate on the ground, begging for forgiveness.

Thirteen years later, Anzu Murata (Mei Nagano) goes to the same location, where a new house was built, and it has her former family name, Mitarai. She’s there to work as a housekeeper for Makiko Mitarai (Kyôka Suzuki), the stepmother who hasn’t seen her in years. She does so under an assumed name: Shizuka Yamauchi.

She’s doing this on purpose: She’s convinced that Makiko, who infiltrated her way into her family’s life as a single mother of two classmates, stole items from their house in the months before she set the house on fire. She then married her father after her parents split up, and became the head of the hospital where he’s a doctor, and a part-time model/influencer. Anzu wants to get into an upstairs walk-in closet, which has been shown in Makiko’s social media; she is convinced she’ll find evidence there that will link Makiko to the fire.

Image is everything to Makiko, which is why she tells Anzu to be discreet when she arrives; she wants people to think she maintains her house on her own. She also tells Anzu to not go to the second floor of the house or take anything. Anzu makes sure she does a good job so she’s invited back; even so, she finds a barrette on the floor that she knows belongs to her mother, Satsuki (Michiko Kichise), who is in the hospital suffering from trauma-induced amnesia. She seems to remember the objects that Anzu brings to her from Makiko’s house, but still can’t connect to the fact that Anzu is her daughter. Her friend Kurea (Kie Kitano) volunteers to help.

After she cooks her sister Yuzu (Yuri Tsunematsu) a meal, she realizes she can further ingratiate herself with Makiko by cooking for the busy executive. She also notices that someone is wandering upstairs, so she takes a chance and goes into the dark, messy room. She at first thinks that Makiko’s younger, college-student son is the one stalking upstairs, but it turns out to be the older son, Kiichi (Asuka Kudô). She tries to appeal to him by cooking and leaving food outside his room.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The story of Burn The House Down, based on a manga of the same name, is reminiscent of American potboilers like Scandal and Revenge.

Our Take: The premise of Burn The House Down is certainly intriguing, though there are some weird tonal inconsistencies that may need to be addressed as the series goes forward.

Anzu is super-serious, and she’s trying her hardest to expose Makiko for the interloper she is, mainly because her ailing mother should get that kind of justice. But then we have Yuzu, who seems to be goofily attached to her sister; she’s interested in Anzu’s undercover adventure, but she doesn’t seem to be that serious about it. We also have Kurea, who uses eats a lot, uses donuts as props, and loves the idea of being part of Anzu’s Scooby gang.

So is this show a serious-minded series about revenge or is it more akin to Buffy The Vampire Slayer? We’re still not sure. We also have other questions: What happened between Anzu and Yuzu’s parents that would lead their father to completely disown them? Doesn’t he wonder what happened to his daughters? Why is Kiichi living as a hermit in his house, and for some reason feels like he wants to mess with Anzu? And just how did Makiko get so far into the Mitarai family that she managed to burn their house down and set Satsuki up for the arson?

Those curiosities are more due to an effective story that draws us in than anything murky or confusing. What happens next is really up in the air, which is what shows like this, which likely will have big twists in every episode, are good at doing.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Makiko fires Anzu after she finds Anzu’s apron button in her walk-in closet. But then we find out how it really got there.

Sleeper Star: Kie Kitano as Kurea, if only for the gag where she shows a chocolate donut to signify Makiko’s “dark past” and a strawberry donut to signify her “bloody secret.”

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could find, but we want to point out that Anzu and Yuzu’s father, Osamu (Mitsuhiro Oikawa) is such a nonentity in the first episode he’s barely worth mentioning. Shouldn’t he be a bigger part of the story?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Despite the tonal inconsistencies, the story of Burn The House Down is pulled us in during its first episode, which is a good sign.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.