Wayward TV Review: Mae Martin and Toni Collette Unleash Dark Magic in a Psychological Thriller That Will Haunt Your Zodiac Sign!
Added on September 10, 2025 inEntertainment News Cards, Movie News Cards
Popular
Numerology Meets Netflix: Get Your Daily Dose of Cosmic Cinema Suggestions Powered By Our AI Astrologer. Find The Show Or Movie You Were Meant To See!
Ever get that eerie feeling that something’s just off-kilter in a small town? Well, pull up a chair, because Wayward throws you headfirst into the unsettling depths of Tall Pines, where the usual “troubled teens” rehab clinic is more like a stage for secrets darker than a Scorpio’s soul. Two runaway teens team up with the new deputy, and trust me, between cult-like vibes and cryptic disappearances, nothing is what it seems. With Mercury currently in retrograde—hello, miscommunication and hidden truths—this Netflix thriller couldn’t be better timed. Mae Martin serves up a cocktail of pitch-black humor and twisted suspense, exploring control, identity, and the paranoia woven into today’s teen psyche. So, if you like your mysteries tangled and your villains charmingly sinister (hello, Toni Collette!), Wayward might just become your next binge obsession. Curious yet? Dive deeper here: LEARN MORE
Plot: Nothing is what it seems in Tall Pines. After an escape attempt from an academy for “troubled teens”, two students join forces with a newly local police officer, unearthing the town’s dark and deeply rooted secrets.
Review: There is always something wrong in a small town where everyone loves the local zealot. For decades, films ranging from The Stepford Wives to The Wicker Man, Twin Peaks to Midsommar, The Village to Midnight Mass, and countless more have shown the dangers of groupthink. The latest addition to the genre is Wayward. Created by comedian and actor Mae Martin, Wayward takes the tried and true formula of the subgenre and incorporates it into a story of troubled teens sent to a rehabilitation clinic that is far more sinister than it seems. With the first episodes debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, the Netflix limited series gets a broad audience for Martin’s blend of pitch-black humor within a timely story about freedom of expression and the shroud of paranoia growing over the next generation of young people. Wayward is precisely the type of series that Netflix has built franchises upon.
Wayward opens with a teenager breaking out of the high-security Tall Pines Academy, a school for rehabilitating teenagers for various reasons, before shifting to Canadian teens Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Chucky‘s Alyvia Alyn Lind), who are barely clinging to attendance at their high school. The burnouts skip class and do drugs with Abbie, dealing with overbearing parents, while Leila deals with the death of her sister. When Abbie is sent to Tall Pines, Leila follows to break out her friend. At the same time, former Tall Pines student Laura Redman (Sarah Gadon) returns to the small town with her husband, Alex Dempsey (Mae Martin), the newest deputy in the city. Alex and Laura are staying at the pleasure of the Academy’s leader, Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette), whose bizarre demeanor and powerful hold over the town give Alex more reason to investigate the spate of disappearances in the village over the years.
Having seen all eight episodes of Wayward, I am less impressed with the overall series than I am with Mae Martin as a writer and actor. Martin has been a part of several British and Canadian series, ranging from full comedy (Baroness von Sketch Show) to comedy-drama (Feel Good), and multiple competition series. Martin, like fellow comedians turned serious filmmakers Jordan Peele and Zach Cregger, has found a story with deep roots that they have wanted to tell for a long time. The idea of non-binary, trans, and other self-identifications being viewed as different and requiring fixing is not new to thrillers or horror stories. Still, Martin never uses Wayward as a soapbox to preach tolerance or to demonize those who subjugate others. Instead, Martin focuses on the parallels between power and control and what can happen when the slippery slope between those two converges. Martin portrays Alex Dempsey as a heroic figure with a roiling sense of inadequacy underneath. Martin is a solid actor who gives their performance the requisite nuance that you root for them to the end.
Wayward has a solid young cast, with Sydney Topliffe and Alyviia Alyn Lind making for great central protagonists. The various teens and staff at Tall Pines Academy could have been clichés ripped from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but everyone is quite good. As always, Toni Collette does a sensational job as Evelyn Wade becomes a terrifying antagonist both within the Academy and in the town at large. Collette has a way of smiling that is both goosebump-inducing and simultaneously welcoming. It is hard to dislike Toni Collette, but she makes Evelyn a villain you want to see torn down. There are multiple great supporting turns in Wayward, including Murderbot‘s Tattiawna Jones as Rabbit, but Sarah Gadon ends up as the most crucial element in this series. As good as everyone in the cast is, Gadon anchors the balance between the teens at the Academy and the people outside of the school, giving Alex someone to protect, but also learn insights about the way Tall Pines works that support the audience in following what is going on.
In addition to creating Wayward, star Mae Martin also wrote the first and final episodes of the series along with Ryan Scott, Evangeline Ordaz, Mohamad El Masri, Kim Steele, Kayla Lorette, Alex Eldridge, and Misha Osherovich. Euros Lyn, Renuka Jeyapalan, and John Fawcett share directing duties. They use the natural surroundings in Ontario as a stand-in for the Vermont setting of the series. The series boasts a haunting score by Marie-Helene L. Delorme, which blends off-key and tonal dissonance to create an eerie musical accompaniment and repeated song references that add to the surreal feel of the story. All eight episodes clock in close to a full hour, with the tale deepening the mystery of the Academy and the town of Tall Pines. The eeriness of the real story is balanced with the strange imagery of the drug-induced and nightmare sequences that add to the unsettling feel of the entire show.
I liked the series overall, but was not quite as impressed by the final chapters as by the opening episodes. Mae Martin has created a timely series that works to stoke the paranoia in the current teen generation compared to the Millennials that came before them. At times, the subplots run overlong and the narrative’s main thrust gets bogged down, but Wayward still manages to be an eerie and creepy drama that takes real fears and turns them into entertainment. At best, Wayward launches a new franchise for Netflix based on where this story leaves off, and at worst, it showcases for a broad audience what Mae Martin has cooking in their imagination. Wayward could have been a stronger series had it stuck the landing a bit more, but the ambiguous nature of this tale may also be precisely what keeps viewers glued through the final episode.
Wayward premieres on September 25th on Netflix.
Source:
JoBlo.com
Auto Amazon Links: No products found.
This will close in 0 seconds
This will close in 0 seconds
){kind=link}