San Francisco Chronicle

Creepy Marvel series feels a bit too familiar

- By Bob Strauss Bob Strauss is a Los Angeles freelance journalist who has covered movies, television and the business of Hollywood for more than three decades.

If you like your horror entertainm­ent with lots of squeaking doors, ratinfeste­d tunnels and people asking “What’s happening?” whenever something weird happens, “Helstrom” is for you.

But those looking for thrills beyond the generic variety may want more than this superpower­ed exorcist series, which begins streaming its first 10 episodes on Hulu on Friday, Oct. 16, has to offer.

A reworking of Marvel Comics’ 1970s antihero Son of Satan and his succubus sister Satana, the TV version created by Paul Zbyszewski (“Agents of S. H. I. E. L. D.”) imagines Daimon and Ana Helstrom as the contentiou­s children of a serial killer who was also a bigtime demon and a possessed, institutio­nalized mother.

When they were kids, Ana ( played as an adult by Sydney Lemmon) was taken on a murder spree road trip by their dad while Daimon ( Tom Austen, “The Royals”) stayed with mom Victoria ( Elizabeth Marvel of “Homeland” and “House of Cards”) until she was carted off to St. Teresa’s Catholic mental hospital, a kind of Gothic fortress with a dungeon for the hopelessly possessed, in Portland, Ore.

Daimon, who can telekineti­cally move objects and is able to control fire, grew up to teach ethics at a local college and do parttime exorcism work for the Portland diocese. Ana settled in San Francisco, where she runs an auction house that specialize­s in collectors items like Napoleon’s sword and Attila the Hun’s battleax. She can also discern crimes evil guys committed by touching them, paralyze the creeps with her mind and, when she deems them deserving, kill them.

Daimon and Ana essentiall­y hate each other for unconvinci­ng reasons, but when it appears that their dead father’s spirit has come back to do bad things, they reluctantl­y reunite to stop the monster.

On their side ( but are they really?) are Dr. Louise Hastings ( June Carryl, “Mindhunter”), an exnun who runs St. Teresa’s; Gabriella Rosetti ( Ariana Guerra, “Five Feet Apart”), a novitiate the Vatican has sent in to assist and report back to Rome; Caretaker ( Robert Wisdom, “The Wire”), who works for a demonconta­inment outfit called the Blood that’s even older than the church; Chris Yen ( Alain Uy, “True Detective”), Ana’s partner in antiquitie­s and justifiabl­e homicide coverups; and the skull of some ancient, but still bloodthirs­ty, oneeyed thing.

Of all the characters, Ana is played the most intriguing­ly by Lemmon ( yes, she is Jack Lemmon’s granddaugh­ter). Strikingly lanky with a Louise Brooks bob, the omnisexual manipulato­r has the tart tongue of a 1930s movie dame, with a cynical attitude toward everything and everyone, and just may get off on the killing impulse imprinted by her father — though that’s the last thing she wants to admit.

Everyone else, at least in the first five episodes provided for review, is at best semidimens­ional. One character is battling cancer, Victoria hams it up with multiple nasty personalit­ies, Gabriella’s celibacy vow may be jeopardize­d by the attractive Daimon, and Chris gets mesmerized into some pretty weird places.

What’s happening, indeed? Well, not much you haven’t seen in other horror series such as “Supernatur­al,” “Grimm” and ... I’d say “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but the closest gloomy “Helstrom” comes to even attempting humor is Daimon blurting out “Love me some San Francisco. Mmm mmm, foodie heaven!”

There’s more graphic gore on the streaming series than you’d see on broadcast networks, but little of it bears the imaginatio­n or the impact of what, say, “Lovecraft Country” does to reinvent creaky genre presentati­ons. Nor is there much evidence yet of the deep, damaged character work seen in Mike Flanagan’s “Haunting of Hill House” and “Bly Manor” Netflix shows. The scariest scene in “Helstrom”

so far is when Ana glides through a crowded dance club touching everyone, but that’s because it looks so unsafe during this COVID era, not that it was conceived with fiendish brilliance.

There is one glimmer of a good omen, though, in this litany of every possession trope the demonhaunt­ed world has ever known: In the comics, Daimon joined the Defenders, which is the hero group of Marvel’s late, lamented Netflix series of the same name. If “Helstrom” is an indication that the likes of Daredevil and Jessica Jones may be resurrecte­d on Disneyrun Hulu, it’s worth enduring all the show’s dark and stormy nights.

 ?? Katie Yu / Hulu ?? Sydney Lemmon and Tom Austen feud as supernatur­al siblings in Hulu’s horror series “Helstrom.”
Katie Yu / Hulu Sydney Lemmon and Tom Austen feud as supernatur­al siblings in Hulu’s horror series “Helstrom.”

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