2 out of 5

Directed by: Kasia Adamik and Olga Chajdas

For me, supernatural procedurals really should just… work. You can flex towards horror, drama, comedy, or anywhere in between; even when the focus is something pretty generic, I feel like I’m given a wider range of aspects to latch on to over a “standard” procedural, where even if I’m not in to sexy smooching vampires, I can at least be amused by the lore; even if I don’t care about the lore, the elevated reality allows the procedural aspects to be quirky; and even if neither of those work, maybe there will be some fun effects or just generally interesting ideas to at least make whatever it is watchable. More concisely: I’m pretty apt to watch your supernatural procedural from start to finish.

Cracow Monsters is a Polish series which uses Polish folklore as its base, and fiddles with some comic book conventionalities: a team of students – each with unique “powers” – are brought together by their professor to battle (or document) the weird intrusions into our reality. As a US viewer, being seated outside of the norms of werewolves or vamps is immediately a positive bump, and blended with the show’s effective use of budget – smart location work; really fantastic creature design – and moody tone, it seems like we’re going to be getting some kind of X-Files-y Riverdale thing, which is not not outside of my viewerly demographic.

Aleksandra (Barbara Liberek) is our POV mopester who acts as our way into this world: beleaguered by nightmares which are actually augers of her supernatural-leaning gifts, Alex is an overly-bright student whose antagonistic personality and scattered lifestyle does her no favors in advancing in school. Her friends are worried; her grandmother – her parents having passed – spouts warnings about spirits and fate whenever Alex reaches out to talk. Her last hope is to get in to Professor Zawadzki’s (Andrzej Chyra) specialized class, which she does after a concerning encounter with TA “Lucky” (Stanisław Linowski), which she initially brushes off as just another nightmare. Unfortunately – or fortunately – this encounter was just a test: those chosen by the Professor are actually uniquely gifted with foresight, or mindreading, or speaking to the dead… and are assisting Zawadzki in some vague save-the-world task.

There are a couple of red flags here, in how easily Alex brushes off the fantastic as, like, just another dream, man, and also how willingly the show wants to push us past any explanations of What, Why, and How, and just get to showing us spooky things. These aren’t necessarily uncommon flags for this kind of stuff, though, as we’re watching a show with “monsters” in the title and so eager for the goods, and the vagueness is likely setup for some later reveals; still, the flags seem a little redder than usual…

As well they should be. While the subject matter is interesting, I undervalued a few things that help these shows along: having good key characters – a compelling hero or villain; standout side characters – and making the supernatural aspects relevant in some way. They can be incredibly superficially relevant, but if things truly are just “X show – but with frankensteins!”, and the cheekiness of that isn’t the point, things unravel quickly. Cracow Monsters is clearly pulling from a deep well of folklore of succubi and mesmerizing santa claus-esque creepers, but once they’re called into existence, it’s almost like the show just wants credit for the namecheck. It’s bizarre how much buildup any given creature will be given, only to ultimately matter 0%, or seem entirely toothless when confronted. Even the main baddie, despite having plenty of screentime and directly impacting the plot by summoning foes for our leads to face, somehow feels almost entirely irrelevant. The writers seemed unable to decide how much they wanted to rely on the audience’s familiarity with the creatures, how much they wanted the show to be monster-of-the-episode bottles versus an overall arc, and how much they wanted this to be Alex’s drama versus a horror thriller, and the result – which is evident from the first episode, with Alex’s initial exposure to this other world visually striking but emotionally tepid – the result is a show that, on mute, looks like it has a fair amount going on, but if you’re actually paying attention, is practically in stasis. Not much really happens between the first and last episode that couldn’t have been better served by a 90 minute movie.

Regarding the good characters, we’ve just got some poor casting choices and direction. Liberek pulls off the anti-social college student incredibly well, but nothing reaches her face. I initially thought they were trying to suggest she was used to what she was witnessing already because she just… doesn’t react. She never looks scared, or panicked, and the discrepancy between that and her dialogue delivery just sinks any scene in which she’s required to emote. We also periodically flash to Eryk Pratsko, a boy who is possessed by the evil entity who our students are trying to track down, and our main antagonist. There’s maybe an opposite problem here, with Pratsko told to ham it up as a Damian type character, and despite some effective makeup, the kid’s maybe too clearly having fun being mean, and then they decide to dub (or alter) his voice with “creepy demon voice,” and none of this is very convincing. Additionally, he recruits a lackey whose state of perpetual shock at his master’s powers visually just looks like the actor wasn’t sure what his lines were. It’s rough.

Chyra plays the mysterious Professor role well, but the way the script involves him quite a bit at the start and then disappears him for multiple episodes robs the role of any momentum, and makes the vagueness of Why things are happening feel silly – like he promises all will be revealed and then just goes Poof and goes away. (And to cover this – maybe it was a scheduling thing; maybe it was an editing thing – the writers just cease having Alex ask any questions about what’s going on.)

Thankfully, all of the other students are firstly fun to be around, and secondly – likely the reason for the firstly – they come across as legit students. They banter and bicker like kids stuck together out of circumstance, and use their gifts both actively and reluctantly, understanding their duties but kind of pissed that they have to deal with these things. It’s a nice part of the show the helped pick up any given episode. Alongside the aforementioned budget proficiency, there’s enough here to muddle through the show, but to connect back to how easy I think I am with supernatural series, I kept finding myself doing other things instead of continuing with this show. These positives (and the topdown interesting premise) made me hopeful it’d turn a corner, but it rather went the opposite way, getting thinner and less compelling we it went on, proving with each opportunity that those red flags were permanently planted.