REVIEW: ‘The Changeling’ Is A Somber Fairy Tale

Cerebral horror is a genre that immediately grabs viewers, twisting with their expectations of reality and the rules of the genre itself. When you use a fairytale as the foundation to build that, you get The Changeling (2023), a series that uses common fairytale tropes and concepts in unique ways, even if its winding narrative can often lose itself.

Created by Boots Riley, adapting Victor LaValle’s novel of the same name, The Changeling (2023), is an eight-part drama series starring and executive produced by LaKeith Stanfield, with Clark Backo, Adina Porter, Samuel T. Herring, Alexis Louder, Jared Abrahamson, and Malcolm Barrett also starring in the series.

In the series, we follow a love story between Apollo and Emma in all of its idyllic and fairytale romance. But that’s only episode one. The rest is all downhill as it descends into a horrific storybook when Emma returns from a trip abroad changed, only to mysteriously vanish after giving birth. Bereft, Apollo finds himself on a death-defying odyssey through a New York City that is just out of view as he searches for answers to his wife’s disappearance and his son’s murder. There is beauty and wickedness and fear and violence and love, and they all just weave into one narrative string from episode one to eight.

The mini-series is a terrifying look at parenthood, particularly postpartum depression, and the harmful cycle that parenthood can be given the circumstances around them. Marketed as a fairytale for grown-ups, The Changeling (2023) is a parable, a fable made to exact a price from its characters and leave its viewers still with talking points that make them address issues around them—though that messaging gets bogged down in stark tonal shifts and narrative confusion.

The Changeling (2023) uses narration at the beginning of episodes to lower the viewer into the story as it builds on itself but in some ways, it’s drastically underutilized in the winding and dense narrative viewers are given. That said, the narration beautifully captures the importance of the series. Bodies recover from trauma, but how long does it take to regain what was lost or for the mind to fix itself?

Here, it captures the pain the series holds and the weight that the characters have to carry, particularly Apollo as he struggles with the tragic loss of his wife and son. He has to carry the physical reminder of his pain on his body, but he also has to hear about it from everyone around him, the tragedy holding a viral status. Apollo is a broken man and he doesn’t know how to be whole. Over the course of the series, The Changeling (2023) attempts to explore Apollo’s grief, but they do so by sacrificing too much in the process.

You can tell one story through different perspectives but in The Changeling (2023) it all becomes a muddled mixture of perspectives meant to show the breaks in reality to reveal the fairytale and the supernatural. These elements feel special and unique but at the same time, they feel disconnected from the larger story. This stands out the most when we get to spend time with Emma on her own, exploring how she got to the point that leads to her vanishing. Emma’s singular story is interesting and provoking but it never seems to grab hold of something larger despite its importance.

Instead, the married couple, the parents torn by violence, are completely at odds with each other, but the series’ extensive back and forths between time periods and story threads make it difficult to understand more often than not. There is something beautiful and scary in The Changeling (2023) specifically as the reality of the fairytale begins to surface after the first third of the season.

That said, the series is too concerned with hiding the resolution over and over again. Because it works extremely hard to hide the twists, the pacing often feels like the series is jumping the shark, leading to a jarring yo-yo effect. The Changeling (2023), despite its stellar performances constantly feels like it’s slipping through your grasp. This makes it hard to bury yourself in the narrative and even harder to buy into more than just the beautiful cinematography and stunning moments of single frames that make for gorgeous photographs taken as still images.

For all of my issues with the narrative structure and somehow breakneck yet lackadaisical pacing, the performances in The Changeling (2023) stand out as unique character studies, holding the foundation of the series when the narrative makes it struggle under its weight. Stanfield as Apollo is stunningly painful to watch in a way that only he can bring to life. As he yells “I am the god Apollo” multiple times throughout the season, each one aches and carries the pain or joy of the moment around it. His resiliency and grief are what propels the series in moments when it’s hard to stay connected to it.

The Changeling (2023) is far from perfect, and its messy narrative structure and inability to balance atmosphere and emotion across each episode is a large road bump in a visually beautiful series. Still, Stanfield’s Apollo is a force, and the fairytale of it all as it unwinds is a reason to still watch. Even when the series feels feverish and otherworldly, its heartbreak and endearing magic allow it to keep steady in a turbulent narrative structure.

The Changeling is streaming now on AppleTV+ with new episodes every Friday through October.