Changeling is streaming on Apple TV+

Streaming on Apple TV+, Changeling is an adaptation of Victor Laval’s 2017 gothic novel, adapted by screenwriter Kelly Marcel. In it, modern New York turns into the abode of witches, trolls and chthonic monsters hunting for small children, and each episode offers new mysteries. Tells Julia Shagelman.

The series is accompanied by a voice-over from the writer himself, who becomes the viewer’s guide in particularly confusing moments. And there are plenty of them here: “The Changeling” intertwines several timelines, references to the folklore of different nations, references to the history of different countries, from Norway to Uganda, and New York urban legends.

The story begins in 2010, when rare bookseller Apollo Kagwa (Lakeith Stanfield) meets Emma Valentine (Clark Bako), who works there, at a library in Queens. He falls in love at first sight and invites her on a date, but the girl refuses him. And then again, and again, and again. But Apollo doesn’t give up, a tenacity he inherited from his father, police officer Brian West (Jared Abrahamson), who met his mother Lillian (played by Alexis Lauder as a young woman and by Adina Porter as an adult) back in 1968. Brian was also instantly smitten, but he sought Lillian’s favor for nine years – being a black immigrant from Uganda, she did not want to date a white man, and even a cop, but in the end she gave in. It takes Apollo less time to hear the cherished “yes” from Emma, ​​but on the very first date she tells him that she is leaving for Brazil for a year. He waits for her to return, they marry, and soon little Brian is born – in the most New York way possible, right on a subway train.

It is clear that if the genre of the series is horror, then the happiness of this little family will be short-lived. And indeed, soon Emma, ​​exhausted by lack of sleep and the constant crying of the baby, begins to receive mysterious messages disappearing from her phone, hinting that someone is watching them, and then she becomes convinced herself and tries to convince her husband that their child has been replaced by some evil forces. He doesn’t believe it and chalks up what he believes are these fantasies to postpartum depression, but Emma’s medications don’t help. By the third episode, the situation is resolved in the most terrible way, and Apollo is left alone, without a wife, without a son, with a feeling of guilt and the feeling that he has failed the most important mission in his life – to become a good father. However, he does not want to come to terms with this and, with the same stubbornness with which he once called Emma on a date, he goes in search of her.

Perhaps the chain of strange and inexplicable events was triggered by Emma’s meeting in Brazil with a witch who tied a red thread on her hand, promising the fulfillment of three wishes and forbidding her to cut it, but that’s exactly what the frivolous Apollo did. Or maybe the key to what is happening is in the children’s book with the scary fairy tale “To the Fairy Kingdom, to the Forest Water” (the title is borrowed from W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Kidnapped Child”). This is one of the few things that the hero inherited from his disappeared father. Or is it about a city that hides its own secrets, brought here by many generations of people along with old and new fears?

Shot in deep contrasting colors and full of almost tangible details, the series generously compensates with atmosphere for the lack of narrative coherence, which becomes more noticeable in the second half of the season. As the action progresses, the heroes find themselves in the Brazilian jungle, New York nooks and crannies hidden from prying eyes, abandoned buildings with a stormy biography. They descend into underground tunnels inhabited by “mole people”, discover an island on the East River where modern witches have found refuge, and fall into the past, which comes to life before our eyes. And of course, don’t forget to dive into the dark and gloomy depths of the Internet. European, Latin American, African and African-American myths, literary motifs, themes of immigration, generational trauma, memory, parental fears and the search for identity – perhaps even too much of all this over the course of eight episodes. But “The Changeling” still manages to hold attention, promising the solution to many puzzles compiled by the authors.