W hat’s more judgmental than a teenage girl? Easy: the Catholic church. Deliciously, Netflix’s new YA drama The Body has both in equal measure. It’s Halloween 2004 at St Mark’s Catholic school and the social hierarchy is exactly as you would expect. Perched at the top is the dance troupe, the Lions, presided over by Anya (Kristina Bogic) and Elise (Sara Boustany), two best friends skirting around their sexual chemistry. The show’s resident outcasts are Lisbeth (Geena Meszaros) and Leo (Jackson Kelly), previously homeschooled siblings who live a limited existence with their unwell mother. Leo seems like a harmless weirdo (or do his disturbing drawings suggest otherwise?) while Lisbeth is a classic loser desperate to ingratiate herself with the cool crowd.
Her opportunity arises when she’s invited to a Halloween party at an abandoned convent nicknamed Devil’s House ... what could possibly go wrong? Dressed as “Slutty God” in an attempt to meet the raunchy dress code, Lisbeth heads to the party, where she’s disappointed to learn that a free spot on the Lions team has been filled by Grace (Sofia Wylie), the devout niece of the school’s priest. But when an ecstasy-fuelled, Satan-baiting initiation ritual leaves Grace comatose and the Lions experiencing hallucinations and seizures, the equilibrium of the school is upended.
With a dark secret at the heart of a group of young people and a queen bee indebted to a misfit, The Body slots itself neatly into the canon of high school-set pop culture. Heavily Cruel Intentions-coded – there are even Catholic schoolgirls doing coke in the loos – it also happily references a plethora of other early 00s teen movies from Bring It On to But I’m a Cheerleader .
While there are tropes aplenty, The Body comes from Quinn Shephard, creator of Under the Bridge (another dark miniseries about teenage girlhood), and she has a firm grasp of the brutal whiplash of adolescence. The central trio of actors – relative newcomers – take familiar stereotypes and turn them into something more interesting and ragged around the edges. As Lisbeth takes every chance she gets to manipulate her way into the inner circle, Anya is in denial over her attraction to Elise, who becomes increasingly tortured by the rejection. Even the occult can’t get in the way of a teenager fumbling to figure out who they are; anyone who has been a teenage girl will know that psychological torment is at least on a par with demonic hysteria.
Whether or not there is something supernatural going on, the show recognises the parallels between adolescence and religion: both are all-consuming, often euphoric and occasionally very dangerous. Over every teen transgression looms a crucifix and the social codes of the school are as enshrined as any in the Bible.
The Body is moody, gothic and – like the Catholic church – seriously into symbolism (there are a lot of writhing snakes). But it is also sexy without being seedy and gleefully camp from the off: it opens by splicing together scenes of the students receiving the eucharist with the Lions stretching each other out on the school lawn.
For millennials who spent 2004 dancing to Hey Ya! at house parties and wearing skinny neck scarves, the retro hit is visceral. Instant messaging, text speak, diamante slogans on velour, The Simple Life on the telly and a soundtrack of Kelly Clarkson, Ciara and Sean Paul place The Body firmly in a world taking its last gasps before social media went global. It was a deeply confusing time for young women navigating their sexuality, and, depending on your experience of high school, the nostalgia is potentially more horrific than any of the supernatural scares on offer.
Like a lot of streaming fare, the eight-episode show could do with being pruned. Moreish though it is, the pacing is sluggish and the stoner lads who loiter on the sidelines are considerably less interesting than the girls.
As a queer-centric Mean Girls meets Carol Morley’s The Falling , its misbehaving teens deliver infinitely more of a good time than the likes of Euphoria. The Body pulses with all the big teen feelings – angst, lust, cruelty and deep shame – revelling in the high stakes of adolescence and just how unholy coming of age can be.
