What do you get when you blend high school hormones, Catholic guilt, mean girls, drugs, superstition, and maybe a whiff of demonic possession? According to the trailer for Netflix’s upcoming series The Body, the result looks to be an unholy mashup of female-centric coming-of-age trauma, buried secrets, and hidden desires, all wrapped around the rivalries of a Catholic school dance team.
Created by actor-turned-filmmaker Quinn Shephard (Not Okay), The Body‘s trailer promises the sort of Yellowjackets-style metaphor of female adolescence as literal hell. As she states of the eight-episode Netflix series, The Body is “a playful spin” on Shephard’s own horrible teenage experiences. “I literally made this for my teen self,” the former Hostages star states. “Tonally, I would describe the show as gritty camp. It’s a raunchy teen psychodrama with a dash of Catholic horror.”
In the trailer, the cast (including Kristina Bogic, Sara Boustany, Sofia Wylie, Geena Meszaros, Shirley Chen, and Gabby Windey) change from their Catholic school uniforms to sexy-religious costumes for a wild, drug-fueled party where things go very wrong. Sworn to secrecy though they are, the pressure sees the girls blurting out sexual secrets, performatively collapsing during mass, and, in one case, googling the never-a-good-idea question, “Is my friend possessed by the Devil?”
Citing inspiration from such diversely female-forward high school horrors as Carrie, Jennifer’s Body, Heavenly Creatures, and Mean Girls (with a little The Crucible thrown in), The Body heads to Netflix on November 11.
