Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticThe blunt opening title card of “Shining Vale” feels like a test: “Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression,” it reads, seeming to signal the beginning of a clunky show about Women and Depression — at least until the next sentence appears onscreen. “Women are also twice as likely to be possessed by a demon,” it says, a immediate and deliberate wink of self-awareness at an audience that might’ve already tried to write the show off.
What’s more, it adds: “the symptoms are the same.”Throughout the first seven episodes made available for critics (the season will have eight in total), “Shining Vale” follows a Brooklyn family coming to grips with the inherent strangeness of their new Connecticut home to increasingly catastrophic ends.
It also ends up juggling so many tricky narrative plates — depression, generational trauma, the slow and steady awakening of a haunted house — that they could easily all come crashing to the ground.
And yet, even in the moments when that possibility seems perilously close, the wrinkles still feel a part of the show’s overall tapestry.
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