A Friend of the Family Review: A Slow-Burn True Crime Series That’s Truly Harrowing
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The post A Friend of the Family Review: A Slow-Burn True Crime Series That’s Truly Harrowing appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: When Robert “B” Berchtold (Jake Lacy) moves with his family to a quaint, peaceful town in rural Idaho, he becomes an instant hit with the Broberg family. The Berchtolds and the Brobergs instantly become inseparable: they vacation together, dine together, and attend the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints together. The catch? B has a secret sexual obsession with the Brobergs’ eldest daughter, pre-pubescent Jan (Hendrix Yancey/McKenna Grace).
Despite his charming, charismatic goody-two-shoes persona, B can only keep his infatuation hidden for so long. Based on the grisly true story that yielded the popular 2017 Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, A Friend of the Family sees B’s fixation on Jan spiral out of control, resulting in a whirlwind of abuse, deception, delusion, and trickery over the course of multiple years and nine remarkably tense episodes.
A Family Matter: If A Friend has anything going for it, it’s its stranger-than-fiction story, which is notable particularly for its unfettered unpredictability. While a majority of true-crime stories that yield on-screen adaptations follow a mostly predictable format — bad guy comes into town, bad guy does some bad stuff, good guy tries to stop the bad guy — A Friend takes the format to which audiences have grown so accustomed and turns it on its head.
Much of the show’s unconventionality comes from its characters. Jan’s parents, Bob (Colin Hanks) and Mary Ann (Anna Paquin), are a steady, God-fearing couple straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. But when faced with major adversity in the form of B, they are anything but predictable. Indeed, they often act in ways that are so bizarre that any audience member is guaranteed to forget that most of this actually happened.
Of course, Bob and Mary Ann’s transgressions will be better experienced by the viewer first-hand, but to offer a taste of what’s to come: The couple waits for over two days before reporting Jan missing after B snatches her from under their roof. And spoiler alert: their behavior only gets more bizarre from that point onward.
Performances to Remember: Bob and Mary Ann’s actions are so outlandish at times that they require the actors to stick the landing on their performances, or else the story would be in danger of slipping from the realm of the shocking to the realm of the far-fetched. Luckily, A Friend’s Hanks and Paquin boast two of the finest performances of the year.
A Friend of the Family (Peacock)
Hanks plays Bob with an unsettling blend of virility and vulnerability, a masterful tightrope walk that at once demonstrates the characters’ discomfort in his role as the family’s patriarch, and challenges standards of masculinity both within the Mormon church and the 1970s as a whole. Bob often teeters between softly feigning sternness toward Mary Ann when she challenges him, and appearing at a loss for what to do when faced with a serious issue, (i.e., his 12-year-old daughter being kidnapped by A Friend of the Family).
Paquin’s role as Mary Ann provides equal footing for her to flex her acting chops (which I’ve firmly believed in since True Blood, by the way). She leans into the character with an understated softness, often speaking lines hardly above a whisper, and wearing conflicting feelings about her relationship with B on each trembling facial expression.
And then there’s Lacy, who has what is perhaps the most complex and difficult role in all of A Friend. He is an excellent match for Hanks and Paquin, wearing the skin of a monster almost too easily, and switching on a dazzling smile that could trick even the strongest. When it counts, he also fabricates vulnerability for pathos’ sake, telling Bob stories of his troubles with his wife Gail (Lio Tipton) with downcast eyes and a convincing trembling voice.
Pick Up the Pace: A Friend’s performances and story are so stellar that one will undoubtedly watch the first few episodes while waiting for the other shoe to drop. And, sadly, it does. The show’s pacing is just a step behind these other elements, sometimes dragging its feet significantly. At times, it feels like a slow burn; but more often than not, the action merely comes across as slow. By the midway point, it becomes evident that the story would have been better served in movie form — nine episodes stretches it far, far too thin.
Indeed, there are times when it feels like A Friend creator Nick Antosca is simply biding his time in order to satiate the masses’ thirst for true crime series, as opposed to true crime films. This comes through in particular when a couple of scenes play out where Bob and Mary Ann have almost identical arguments about B.
The Verdict: Still, a lackadaisical pace is hardly the worst thing in the world when taking into account such a riveting, fascinating story. Indeed, sluggishness doesn’t do too much to take the viewer out of A Friend, thanks to the performances, as well as a cool color-grading technique that places the subjects directly in the show’s retro time period. These elements combined make for an almost unbearably uncomfortable viewing experience. And more than anything, that is the foremost indicator of true crime storytelling done right.
Where to Watch: The first three episodes of A Friend of the Family premiere on October 6th. Subsequent episodes will be released weekly on Thursdays.
Trailer:
A Friend of the Family Review: A Slow-Burn True Crime Series That’s Truly Harrowing
Aurora Amidon
Popular Posts
