There is something wonderfully strange about My Sad Dead. It is a ghost story, but it rarely behaves like one. The dead are not lurking behind doors waiting to produce a jump scare. They sit around the house. They complain. They wander through streets. They carry the emotional residue of the lives they left behind. Sometimes they are frightening. Sometimes they are sad. Occasionally, they are so absurd that the series becomes unexpectedly funny. And underneath all of it is a very human story about grief, family resentment, violence, and the things people would rather leave buried. That is what makes the series so interesting—and frustrating.
Pablo Larraín's adaptation of Mariana Enríquez's writing is unmistakably authored. This does not look or feel like conventional Netflix horror. The four episodes are atmospheric, unsettling, and frequently uncomfortable, with a visual language that seems determined to make ordinary spaces feel vaguely contaminated. The supernatural isn't presented as an alternative reality. It simply exists alongside everyday life. Ema has lived with the dead for so long that she treats them with the exhausted familiarity of someone dealing with particularly annoying neighbours. Mercedes Morán is exceptional in the role.
Ema could easily have been written as the mystical protagonist who gradually discovers the extent of her powers. Thankfully, she isn't. She is a tired, recently retired doctor who has spent decades learning how not to care too much about the dead. Her gift isn't exciting to her. It is a burden, an inconvenience and, occasionally, a source of responsibility she would rather avoid. Morán plays her with a wonderfully dry combination of resignation and irritation. There is very little theatricality in the performance, which makes the supernatural elements around her feel even stranger.
Her relationship with her dead mother is particularly effective because the series refuses to sentimentalise it. Death hasn't magically transformed their relationship into something beautiful. If anything, their unfinished business becomes more uncomfortable precisely because the mother is still there. The ghost isn't simply a symbol of grief; she is still a person with all the emotional baggage that existed when she was alive.
Dolores Fonzi is equally good as Carolina, Ema's daughter. Their relationship gives the series its emotional grounding, because underneath the ghosts and violence is a fairly recognisable family problem: two people who love each other but have accumulated enough resentment that neither knows how to speak honestly anymore. Fonzi gives Carolina a prickliness that could have become unpleasant, but there is enough vulnerability underneath it to make the character work.
Then there is Julie, played by Carolina Álvarez, whose supernatural connection to the dead is considerably more disturbing than Ema's. Her abilities are bound up with sexuality, alienation, and a sense that she doesn't quite know how to exist within the world of the living. Julie could have been reduced to a conventional "troubled young woman" character, but the series instead makes her both unsettling and sympathetic. She is not simply the source of the supernatural escalation; she is another person who doesn't know what to do with something she cannot explain.
What I found particularly effective is how My Sad Dead gradually expands its definition of haunting. Initially, the ghosts belong to Ema's private world. Then the supernatural begins to bleed into the neighbourhood, and the series starts connecting individual grief to collective trauma. The setting matters enormously. The violence, poverty, institutional failures, and general sense of abandonment aren't just background decoration for the horror. They are part of what the ghosts represent.
In that sense, the series is at its most interesting when it suggests that the dead are not necessarily the frightening part. People can create enough horror while they're still alive.
That social dimension gives the show considerably more weight than its premise might initially suggest. The supernatural becomes a way of talking about memories that refuse to disappear and wounds that haven't been resolved simply because everyone has stopped discussing them. The dead remember what the living would prefer to forget.
My Sad Dead can be painfully slow. There are sequences where the atmosphere is doing considerably more work than the story. Larraín is clearly interested in mood, sound, framing, and the uncomfortable experience of simply being in these spaces. Sometimes that is hypnotic. Sometimes I was sitting there thinking, yes, Pablo, I understand that the street is depressing. The series occasionally mistakes duration for depth, allowing certain encounters or visual motifs to continue after they've already made their point.
As a miniseries, I think the episodic format works better, but the seams are still noticeable. There are moments when one storyline seems to be building toward something substantial only for the series to abruptly shift its attention elsewhere. Some of the subplots are fascinating individually but don't always integrate smoothly into the larger narrative.
The humour is another gamble, and I actually enjoyed it more than I expected. My Sad Dead isn't a comedy, but it has a very dry, occasionally absurd streak. Family conversations, social tensions, and certain characters are treated with enough deadpan irony that the series can be genuinely funny immediately after something deeply disturbing. That tonal instability could easily have ruined the show. Instead, it contributes to the peculiar feeling that you're watching something that doesn't quite fit into any single genre. And that is probably my biggest takeaway.
I don't think My Sad Dead is consistently successful, but I do think it is consistently interesting. There are plenty of horror series that are more frightening. There are dramas that are more emotionally devastating. There are supernatural mysteries with cleaner plotting. But very few streaming shows look at death, family and social violence through quite this particular combination of melancholy, absurdity and grotesque intimacy.
Most importantly, the series understands that grief isn't clean. People don't process loss in neat stages. Families don't resolve decades of resentment because a supernatural event gives them an opportunity to talk. The dead don't necessarily provide answers. Sometimes they just make it impossible to continue pretending that nothing happened. I wouldn't recommend My Sad Dead to someone looking for a conventional horror binge. It requires patience, and it occasionally wanders into territory where I could feel the three-hour runtime sitting beside me on the sofa. But if you like atmospheric horror that is more interested in psychological and social unease than scares, there is a lot here to appreciate.
The ghosts are memorable. The performances are excellent. The ideas are considerably stronger than the plotting. And Mercedes Morán gives the whole thing a centre of gravity that keeps the stranger material from floating completely away. My Sad Dead isn't really about being haunted by the dead. It is about what happens when the dead refuse to let the living forget.
Final Score- [7/10]
Reviewed by - Anjali Sharma
Follow @AnjaliS54769166 on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times