My Encounter With Evil Season 1 Review – An abuse of over-dramatized re-enactments

Episode Guide

It’s Already Here
Please Help!
Who Are You?
Between Good and Evil

Studies have shown that mistaken eyewitness testimonies account for about half of all wrongful convictions. Part of this comes from the way our brains interpret memory, which can – like trace evidence – be contaminated, lost, distorted or destroyed over time. With that in mind, My Encounter With Evil is Netflix’s latest series that relies almost exclusively on said eyewitness accounts to retell 3 dark and sinister stories of possession.

At the start of the first episode we’re told “these stories are real” before diving into the details of what happened to said women and their families. Are the tales true or do they embellish a little? I’m not about to cast judgments on anyone but with only a smattering of real footage, big, dramatized re-enactments and a couple of testimonies from priests to confirm the stories, there’s not a lot here to sway sceptics across to being believers. But that’s not to say this couldn’t have been engrossing.

The show runs for 4 episodes and each interweave the stories for these women, playing out like an actual narrative with a big dramatic pay-off during the climactic chapter. These three women in question are Sully Urbina, Florencia Macías and Andrea Viridiana Rostro Olvera. Each are given an introduction in episode 1, including an extensive history of their family and their experiences with demonic entities.

Instead of each episode depicting a singular story and then moving on to the next like an episodic romp, My Encounter With Evil has an interesting narrative style, deciding to add all 3 stories together and just skipping back and forth between them.

This is, unfortunately, a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, this allows the episodes to stay fresh and avoid stagnation without feeling too repetitive. At the same time though, the sporadic manner in which it jumps around means you’re constantly juggling the tales of various women and trying to remember all the intricate details of each.

Speaking of details, My Encounter With Evil is big on the dramatization and it’s one of the biggest problems with this show. I like spooky stories as much as the next horror enthusiast but the way My Encounter With Evil abuses its dramatic musical stings, extreme close-up shots and horror imagery just becomes tiresome after a while. Almost the entirety of this show is taken up with those re-enactments, and there’s not an objective perspective in place.

For example, one of these women admits she’s had an abusive past and has been suffering with trauma for a while. Her daughter – the one possessed – finds herself a loner at school and depressed. When she’s found with bruises over her knees in the middle of the night, the family immediately jump at the idea of being attacked by a ghost. An old man wearing a palm hat to be precise. Now, this may be the case but at no point does the show look at alternate reasons for this. For example, an iron deficiency can cause you to bruise easily.

These sort of niggling issues crop up right the way through the four episodes and it links back to that idea of not being objective and relying heavily on eye-witness accounts. You may find yourself enjoying this but unlike something like 28 Days Haunted, which is genuinely funny and has some merit to watching, My Encounter With Evil does not, which is a real shame. You’ll find no scares here; the only horror is the horrific way this show abuses its dramatized segments.