Saturday, 16 April 2016

Hemlock Grove

I hadn’t watched any of the films/series on the list that Kat had provided us therefore it was hard for me to choose which I want to do especially as I’m not a fan of horror films. I looked them all up online, and found that Hemlock Grove caught my attention the most. There were a few I had heard of such as The Walking Dead; however I wanted to do something different that I hadn’t studied before.

‘Hemlock Grove is an American horror fantasy thriller television series. Executive produced by Eli Roth, developed by Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman, and a production of Gaumont International Television, the series is based on McGreevy's novel of the same name. The show premiered April 19, 2013, with all 13 episodes made immediately available for online viewing.

The show examines the strange happenings in Hemlock Grove, a fictional town in Pennsylvania. Roman Godfrey, heir to the town's wealthy Godfrey family, befriends the town's newcomer, Peter Rumancek. Recent brutal murders in the town have stirred up rumours, and the two work together to shed light on the case while also hiding their own dark secrets.

On June 19, 2013, Netflix renewed Hemlock Grove for a second season of 10 episodes, to air in 2014. On July 18, 2013, Netflix earned the first Primetime Emmy Award nominations for original online only web television for the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2013. Three of its online original series - Arrested Development, Hemlock Grove, and House of Cards - earned nominations.

The second season premiered on July 11, 2014. On September 2, 2014, Netflix renewed it for a third and final 10-episode season. The third season premiered on October 23, 2015.

Plot:

The series is set in the town of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania. The town is a mixture of extreme wealth and poverty, as the closing of the town's steel mill many years earlier caused many to lose their jobs. The town's main sources of employment are now the Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies and Hemlock Acres Hospital. Heading the Institute which is rumoured to conduct sinister experiments on a daily basis is the imposing Olivia Godfrey (Famke Janssen), while Hemlock Acres' lead psychiatrist is Olivia's dead husband's brother, Dr. Norman Godfrey (Dougray Scott).

As season one opens, the town's rumour mill turns even more twisted, as two teenage girls are brutally killed and their bodies left for unsuspecting people to find the next day. Peter Rumancek (Landon Liboiron) a 17-year-old Romani boy is suspected of the crimes by some of the townsfolk; he is also rumoured to be a werewolf. Secretly he is a werewolf, and, along with the heir to the Godfrey estate, the troubled Roman Godfrey (Bill Skarsgård), he sets out to solve the mystery.

Rounding out the main cast of characters of the first season are Norman's daughter (Roman's cousin), the beautiful, Letha Godfrey (Penelope Mitchell) who claims the father of her unborn child is an angel from Heaven, and Christina Wendall (Freya Tingley), a lonely girl who becomes interested in Peter.

For season two, two former supporting characters were promoted to the main cast of characters: Peter's con-artist older cousin Destiny (Tiio Horn), who makes her living as a psychic medium, and Dr. Johann Pryce (Joel de la Fuente), the lead scientist of the Godfrey Institute, a brilliant but ruthless man of science, gifted with super-strength. A cult has arisen that is bent on destroying the supernatural creatures in Hemlock Grove by any means necessary. To make matters worse, both Peter and Roman struggle with their nature, as Peter risks becoming the same killer from the first season and Roman, after his full immersion with his true nature in the first season, has developed an insatiable hunger to kill. As they fight their enemies and deal with their situations, they must also deal with the monsters they are becoming, or have already become.’

Text reference: Hemlock grove (TV series) (2016) in Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemlock_Grove_(TV_series) (Accessed: 16 April 2016).


Nemiroff, P. (2015) Hemlock grove season 3 trailer promises no happy endings. Available at: http://collider.com/hemlock-grove-season-3-trailer/ (Accessed: 16 April 2016).

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