Review: The Untapped, Dark Powers of Netflix's ARES

It has been a little while since we have had a big drama about high society and the secret organizations or cults within like Eyes Wide Shut. Thus is born the Dutch TV show, Ares. As a basic plot summary, the show is about an intelligent medical student named Rosa in Amsterdam who gets involved with an elite society of very powerful and wealthy people whose secrets seem to have secrets. Honestly, to say anything else would spoil it. So I’ll refrain from saying anything else, it’s worth the mysterious ride.

This show and season do a lot of things right. Never is the audience not learning new things about the interworking of the society, Ares. However, there are always more secrets lurking in the shadows to keep watchers intrigued. I found the concepts and story to be fairly original and well put together, while only suffering from a couple of genre tropes. Now, to be clear, this show gets a bit more horrific as time goes on making good use of it’s MA rating, so be alert if you are squeamish or want to fast forward some very surprising scenes. The acting, in general, is great, the English dub is okay for the most part with some epic failures at times. I’d recommend watching it with English subtitles and the original Dutch audio to get a better experience. The Dutch actors are very good with only a select few exceptions that are just mediocre. The music, cinematography, and effects were all really good too, high Netflix quality, just a small step under Stranger Things and The Witcher.

Now, what is wrong with the show? I think some of the foreshadowings was so out of place or front and center, that it was more confusing than alluring. Instead of asking “Oh! What is that?!” with excitement, I would ask, “Umm, why is that there?” Like I mentioned before, the English voice acting can be so bad that it’ll ruin a scene’s mood or drama completely. So, I would be safe/adventurous and go with the subtitles and original Dutch. I found the ending to be fascinating, but also oddly setting up too much for a second season with no great way to continue the show. It wasn’t bad, it was just far weirder than I expected.

Overall, I was happy with how the show explored much more than I expected with a secret society and the lengths a person would go to achieve greatness. It was a higher quality program that I expected too. Yeah, people may need to put on their “Just Go With It” hats a handful of times through the season, but the surprises, twists and turns all amount to a pretty entertaining watch.