For many people, cults have been an endless form of fascination, which has heavily bled into the entertainment world in the past couple of years. Streaming platforms like Netflix have become known for their true crime documentaries about serial killers, cults, and everything in between. Audiences have been eating this kind of content up, whether through listening to their daily podcast or turning on the television. Some say this interest stems from the fact that it is true and unbelievable in everyday life, hence many people’s obsession with true crime as a genre. Regardless, Netflix has released a new limited series titled Devil in Ohio, which might be adapted from a novel, but definitely feels like something relevant to the world today.
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Devil in Ohio is based on a book by the same name written by showrunner Daria Polatin. The series was announced in September 2021 by Netflix, with an order for eight episodes. Andrew Wilder, who wrote several episodes of Criminal Minds, was included among the executive producers. Devil in Ohio’s cast was subsequently revealed when the series was announced by the platform and filming began that month. A year later, in September 2022, all eight episodes of the miniseries were released on Netflix. Every two episodes, the director switches, but each comes in with a background on thrillers, horrors, and legal procedures.
Emily Deschanel (Bones, My Sister’s Keeper) stars in the leading role of Dr. Suzanne Mathis, a psychiatrist working inside a hospital. Deschanel is fairly familiar with playing doctors like this, as this role echoes her previous one on Fox’s series Bones. The Eyes of Tammy Faye’s Sam Jaeger portrays Peter, while Gerardo Celasco (Passions, How To Get Away With Murder) and Madeleine Arthur (P.S. I Still Love You, Snowpiercer) also guest star. This cast seems limited with their experience in thrillers but offers a fresh addition to the genre with their performances.
Fleeing From a Cult Isn’t Easy
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Devil in Ohio grounds itself in the story of Dr. Suzanne Mathis, a kind-hearted doctor that seeks to help out every patient she can. One day, when a trucker finds a girl on the side of the road, Suzanne’s life finds itself completely changed. As one of Suzanne’s daughter’s grumbles after she goes to work one morning, she is always trying to save someone. Fitting for a psychiatrist, but in the case of extraordinary circumstances, can lead to one’s downfall. She sympathetically brings the girl home, despite her not communicating and being incapable of articulating what exactly she went through to land in the hospital. At the same time, Suzanne has younger daughters at home who can help coach the girl, eventually identified as Mae after Suzanne coaches her, in an attempt to assimilate back into the real world.
But there is a catch to all of this: it is quickly revealed Mae escaped from a cult. She is from Amon County, where a character comments how a strange community like the Amish. Mae escaped from the community, but her fleeing comes with a certain set of consequences, and important people, including the Amon County sheriff, are trying to track her down. At the same time, Suzanne’s family has their own variations of subplots. One of the daughters, Jules, deeply struggles at school and is denied the opportunity to sit with her elder sister due to her lack of popularity. Suzanne’s husband, Peter, is a real estate agent and suffers from the consequences of a buyer backing out of a house deal, leading him to pick up the pieces. The family is slowly falling apart individually before Mae enters the household, so when it is her time to shine in the Mathis home, so begins the domino effect.
Where Mae is from, they worship Satan/Lucifer, and when she finally starts talking and is introduced into the Mathis home, the subplot of the cult wanting her back is gradually brought into the story. As the camera switches between the characters and their individual stories, flashbacks are woven into the storyline to introduce aspects of trauma that might not be directly spoken about in an everyday conversation. These slightly forced moments of exposition do little for the plot as a whole, especially when it comes to pivoting toward the police officer trying to figure out where Mae came from. As he tries to uncover the truth behind the cult, it seems counter-intuitive to have him asking the same questions as Suzanne, thus losing his purpose in the grand scheme of things.
An Eerie, but Uncomplicated Thriller
From the get-go, as soon as Devil in Ohio releases its first round of surprises, it becomes increasingly obvious where this story is going to go. Suzanne Mathis is set up to be the woman who has it all originally. She is a doctor, has a family with three daughters and a husband working as a real estate agent, and everyone has problems except Suzanne until Mae is introduced into her life. This specific detail implies that Suzanne is the anchor keeping all of this together, failing to notice what is wrong in her own family’s life and that when she, too, finally crumbles under the pressure everything is going to get so much more real.
Suzanne’s flaws become more evident as the story progresses, and she makes some emotional decisions instead of logically sitting down with the issue at hand. This writing unravels the narrative that she is a confident, assured woman, and leans on the tropes of an emotional woman. However, this makes her more human at the end of the day—she may be obsessed with Mae’s situation and circumstances, but often it only takes one unknown variable to topple a house of cards. This balances well with Peter, Suzanne’s husband because he defies the expectation of the television dad. He is deep in debt and does not seem to have his life together either, which makes all of this even more disastrous than it already has been.
One of the series’ biggest plights was that it did not have enough time to spend with the characters. It does some aspects of the plot right, such as establishing the individual Mathis family members’ issues before Mae comes into the fold, alleviating the perfect amount of tension at times to keep the viewer wanting more and asking what will happen next. However, this tension happens to occur sporadically and is not enough to warrant a rewatch. At times Devil in Ohio is excruciatingly slow, the conversation slow, stiff, and dull when compared to its tighter moments with quick, snappy dialogue and exciting reveals. It had the potential to be a very good thriller if done right, but the show falls victim to the details that ultimately hold it back.
Mae and Suzanne are the characters central to this story. While Suzanne might be the person keeping the illusion of peace with her family together, Mae becomes the anchor for the entire show. Without Mae and the mystery of who she is being done right, the show would have fallen apart completely. Based on the circumstances of how she appeared in the hospital, and how tight-lipped she has been about her past, there are more than enough reasons to suspect her. Combined with her background, that adds an even deeper layer of suspicion. Her presence alone can be unnerving at times, adding to the sinister thread that permeates into almost every scene towards the latter half of the episodes. It would be to the series’ benefit, however, to have potentially expanded upon and given Mae more room to be explored as a character.
Devil in Ohio has several flaws, it still is a decent thriller. It keeps its viewers wanting more, guessing the details behind what a character’s motives and background might be before plummeting to reveals in the final episodes. It does lean into the hype currently around cults, as Netflix especially has been known to be creating a lot of true crime documentary series, several of which include the topics discussed in Devil in Ohio. Will there be a season two? It might be hard to say as of right now, but the series is worth watching at least once even if it is not renewed. Some may find themselves frustrated with certain plot points and characters, but as the episodes blur and drag by, it may be worth overlooking by the end.
All eight episodes of Devil in Ohio are available to stream exclusively on Netflix as of September 2, 2022.
