Sirens review: Hilarious and horrifying, Julianne Moore’s Netflix show is a cult hit in the making

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Glenn Howerton, Milly Alcock, and Meghann Fahy in a still from Sirens.

Simone wants nothing to do with her past life — she grew up working class, and miraculously found herself with a seat at Yale. Her early life was marked by unspeakable trauma, which is revealed in the show’s stand-out fourth episode. There are five in total; all tightly wound and written with a richness that is so rare in this day and age of ambient ‘content’. Simone ran away the first chance that she got, and essentially remodelled herself into a different person after being taken under the wing by Michaela — think of her as a version of Sobhita Dhulipala’s character from Made in Heaven. Devon, on the other hand, was left to deal with her family’s fragility with zero support. When we meet her, she has just been released from jail, following an all-night bender.

The several other addictions that she is battling manifest through the course of the show, inviting nothing but sympathy. Devon is hanging by a thread, and she didn’t think that the one person she could count on to lend a hand would have joined a cult. Determined to break her out, she parks herself on the island, and gets a good look at the madness Michaela and her minions are up to. Every staff member, she discovers, has been made to sign non-disclosure agreements. The entire property is overseen by a state-of-the-art personal assistant named Zeus. The domineering Michaela exists in a cuckoo-land, while her husband Pete, played by a deceptively demure Kevin Bacon, appears to have retreated into a corner.

In a memorable conversation that he has with Simone and Devon’s dad Bruce in the fourth episode, they discuss the merits of wealth. While Bruce is certain that he’d have been happier with a little more cash in his pocket, Pete tells him that even his endless wealth couldn’t help him reconcile with his estranged children. Both middle-aged men are living in regret, of mistakes made, relationships abandoned, and time wasted. Meanwhile, Simone and Devon have their own heart-to-heart about the horrors they experienced as kids. By this time, it becomes clear that Sirens isn’t as farcical as it had initially let on; in fact, it’s surprisingly complex.

And writer Molly Smith Metzler knows exactly what she’s doing. By hitting all the buzzwords in her premise — Cults! Murder! Money! — she is able to sneakily introduce hefty ideas about the class divide, about family ties, about survival. Because that is what each of these people is doing. They’re surviving. The children are surviving despite their parents; the women are surviving despite the men; the men are surviving despite each other. Sirens wants to lure you in with the promise of scandal and sleaze, but this is merely a trick. The show sheepishly apologises to the audience for doing this, via Devon, of course.

Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon in Sirens.

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Speaking of Fahy, what she pulls off here is nothing short of incredible. It isn’t easy to find dramatic depth when you’re sheathed in satire. The first couple of episodes are especially silly; this is when the show is pretending to be a The White Lotus rip-off; it’s when Fahy is supposed to roll her eyes loudly and trip over herself. It speaks to her skills as a performer that she’s able to inject heart-wrenching pathos into scenes that would’ve played more broadly in the hands of a lesser actor. Ditto for Moore and Alcock; they’re doing a performance within a performance, which is always the most difficult kind of acting to pull off. It’s like Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the Dog, playing a character who’s playing another character. Sirens is like an unputdownable novel; the sort of summer read that you shred over a weekend. It’s a show about cults that’s destined to become a cult show.

Sirens
Creator – Molly Smith Metzler
Cast – Meghann Fahy, Julianne Moore, Milly Alcock, Kevin Bacon, Glenn Howerton
Rating – 4/5