The following is a spoiler-free review for all 8 episodes of The Innocents, which premieres Friday, September 24 on Netflix.
The Innocents, a YA romance with strange, grotesque, almost-X-Men like underpinnings, is an oddball blend of suffering and drama that picks up and gels as the season progresses. The story is immensely weird and off-putting at the get-go, but then I found myself, after crossing the halfway point, sucked into an over-arching mystery that had unfortunately obfuscated many of the initial beats early on.
The Innocents takes a ton of patience, but at only 8 episodes, it’s not long before viewers start being rewarded. The hook here is shapeshifting. Two teens in love in a dreary (or extra dreary) corner of England – Sorcha Groundsell’s June and Percelle Ascott’s Harry – decide to run off together, unaware that the strict and suffocating rules that June’s father forces her to adhere to are due to the fact she’s about to possibly exhibit the same supernatural abilities her mom possessed – the gift/curse of being able to transform into someone else.
Source: IGN.com Netflix's The Innocents Review