Film Review of Nine Perfect Strangers
Photo by Papaioannou Kostas on Unsplash
By Geoff Carter
The opening sequence of Hulu’s Nine Complete Strangers is reminiscent of classic murder mysteries like And Then There Were None or Clue. A varied assortment of characters, including a dysfunctional family, a disillusioned writer, an alienated couple, an irrepressibly cheerful middle-aged woman, a wise-cracking misanthrope, and a secretive young man arrive at Tranquillium, an elite health and fitness center that promises its clients to remake them by the end of their ten-day stay. Tranquillium is run by Masha Dimitrichenko (Nicole Kidman), a former corporate CEO who has now turned her life work into helping others. And, like those classic murder mysteries it shares the classic opening with, there is an ulterior motive for gathering this specific group together.
The Marconi family, headed by Napoleon (Michael Shannon), an annoyingly perky and optimistic soul who (all too vocally) hopes Tranquillium will mend his family’s deep wounds—the extent of the damage is slowly revealed through the nine episodes of the series. Heather Marconi (Asher Keddie) is deeply sunken into a morass of sadness while daughter Zoe (Grace Van Patten) seems to be determined to be as normal as possible. The collective Marconi trauma—eventually revealed—is the linchpin on which the story turns.
There is a beautiful young couple: lottery winner Ben Chandler (Melvin Gregg) and his insecure social influencer wife Jessica (Samara Weaving) who have come (driving a canary yellow Maserati) to mend their foundering marriage.
There is Frances Welty (Melissa McCarthy) a writer whose career and personal life are foundering, Tony Hogburn (Bobby Cannavale), an ex-NFL tight end battling chronic pain and drug addiction, Lars Lee (Luke Evans), a mysterious guest with a hidden agenda, and Carmel Schneider (Regina Hall) a bubbly and compliant single mother whose husband has left her for a young chippy.
The premise leaves the viewer wondering—quite literally—what are these people’s problems? Why have they come to a wellness center? What needs to be fixed? Some of the attendees’ problems, like the Chandlers or Frances Welty’s, seem obvious, but others are more puzzling. Adding to the mystery is the fact that the mysterious Masha implies that she chose all the participants as necessary pieces needed to complete her own cryptic agenda.
Over the course of the eight episodes in the series, the past transgressions, wounds, and crimes of these strangers are revealed during the regimen of Masha’s rather odd health and wellness protocols. Tranquillium is not your typical health or rehabilitation center. In one session, the guests are made to dig their own grave-like holes, and then lie in them to reflect on their lives. In another, they are sent out into the surrounding woods with no food—and, being Americans, they can’t take not eating for five hours—with alarming results. As part of their daily routine, they are required to drink custom made smoothies each morning—each with its own special ingredients.
The mysteries behind the strangers’ painful histories are compelling; in fact, they are much more compelling than the central enigma of Masha’s background and her motive for gathering this specific group of strangers to her health farm. Her assistants at the center are slavishly devoted to her, but the power she holds over them is never clearly defined and not entirely believable.
At one point, Masha tells the guests that before she founded Tranquillium, she was shot and pronounced clinically dead, implying that this experience has given her almost supernatural insight into the minds and souls of her clients. In fact, Masha’s brush with the afterlife is the reason for own quest for retribution and fullness. The methodology used to reach deep within her clients’ psyches—while interesting and clever—does not adequately explain its results. To disclose any more would compromise the viewing pleasure of the Potato’s audience, which he is always reluctant to do.
Parts of Nine Perfect Strangers are quite enjoyable. The acting is nothing short of superb. Michael Shannon shines as the grieving father hiding behind a relentless façade of forced optimism. Melissa McCarthy is simultaneously funny and poignant as a romance writer who has reached the realization that her novels are crap—just before her publishing contract is cancelled. Bobby Cannavale is wickedly funny as an acerbic misanthrope who slowly—through his friendship with Frances (the writer)—allows his humanity to shine through. Kidman’s Masha seems a little too perfect and, even near the end, a little too opaque.
The writing, however, gets a little strained. Some of the dialogue (even though it is deftly handled by the actors) is clunky and parts of the plot’s promise are too far-fetched—even for a fantasy mystery—for the story to remain credible. The source of Masha’s magnetic hold over the group is never adequately accounted for; yes, she came back from the brink of death, but that doesn’t explain the source of her secret rehabilitative formula. The formula does, however, provide for some interesting and credible plot twists, as when ghosts appear, or tiny people (a la Eraserhead) suddenly pop up out of nowhere.
Nine Perfect Strangers is an entertaining watch—up to a point. As the guests begin losing their outer defenses, revealing their very human foibles, viewers can’t help but to feel sympathy or outrage or share their pain. But the conclusion is ultimately unsatisfying, stretching (even in a very flexible genre) the boundaries of credibility.
The coda to the series, an epilogue-like sequence that reveals the final fates of all nine strangers, attempts to stretch the story into a sort of meta-fiction, circling back to the source of all things fictional, but it does not quite pull it off.
Nine Perfect Strangers is a pretty good watch. I didn’t consider watching it a waste of time, but I also didn’t consider it time especially well spent. It is entertaining, jarring at times, and extremely well-acted, but the conclusion is ultimately unsatisfying, and most definitely far from perfect.
