The series Locke & Key is available on Netflix since February 7. Back on an adaptation that has already spilled a lot of ink.
Locke & Key : the story
Imagine discovering, shortly after your father's murder, that his family owns a huge and mysterious Gothic mansion. And may your mother, to help you recover from this painful episode, make you move into this Victorian mansion-like house with a questionable and unreassuring past.
This is how the series Locke & Key, a new Netflix nugget, begins. We discover the Locke family, who have just lost their patriarch, Rendell Locke. Nina, the widow ex-alcoholic who tries to protect her children. Tyler, the eldest of the siblings, a kind of king of high school in full depression, but who will prove to be more interesting than it seems. Kinsey, the misunderstood youngest. And finally, Bode, the youngest, who will be the key to the start of the plot.
And speaking of keys, they are the ones that will interest us. Because, you see, Key House (name of the house) is not just a huge house a little creepy. In addition to reminding us of The Shining, the domain of the Locke family has the particularity of hiding in its lair several keys with powers as extraordinary as diabolical. Only the Locke children can hear the whispers and find them. They discover keys, such as the "Anywhere Key" that can transport you to any place, as long as it has a door, in a single turn of the lock. Or the "Head Key", which allows you to enter your own head and thus meet your heaviest secrets.
However, they are not the only ones to know about the existence of these keys… A demonic power, in the form of a young woman and named Dodge, is ready to do anything to seize it.
Complicated development
Although the story seems relatively simple in theory, its screen adaptation has had a lot of twists and turns. Locke & Key is above all a comic book written by Joe Hill (the son of Stephen King, and the author of Horns or In the Tall Grass for example), illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. And the universe developed in Locke & Key is so rich and complex that many have burned their wings trying to give it a television form.
First, it was Fox that announced its purchase of the rights and the production of a series in 2010. Failed, it will never see the light of day. Then, in 2014, Universal set out that a horror trilogy in movies would do comics justice. Still failed, no film will be made. Then, it was Hulu that, in 2017, ordered a pilot based on the universe created by Hill and Rodriguez. Triple failure, because the streaming service will not validate the series.
It was therefore necessary to wait until 2020 and Netflix for Locke & Key to finally be ported to the small screen. And quite successfully.
Locke & Key, the new Stranger Things?
A group of teenagers who have to face strange forces of evil, without the help of adults who seem completely indifferent or lost, does it remind you of something? Normal, the target audience for Netflix during the creation of Locke & Key was obviously the same as the one who loved Stranger Things. The latter coming to an end (the 4thseason is scheduled for 2020), Netflix had to find a new goose with golden eggs for the adulescents that we are!
However, the similarities with the Duffer brothers' series are far from disturbing. After all, groups of adventurous teens were not born Hawkins: the Goonies, E.T… Youth in the face of the inexplicable is the initiatory novel of our time. In addition, the universe of Locke & Key is still very different from that of Stranger Things. The Lockes' home, Key House, is a character in its own right and the action rarely deviates geographically, except to show us the Locke children in high school (and sometimes turn to the teen series, reminding us of Riverdale or Sabrina).
Netflix has nevertheless taken care to water down the comics of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, in order to make its adaptation more family-friendly. Indeed, goodbye bloody dead and awkward scenes. Deaths are suggested, or arrive off-screen and we discover a corpse much "cleaner" than it would have been in the original work. The goal, once again, is to please young (adult) people looking for some thrills and a fantastic story. There is no question here of finding a successor to American Horror Story.
The plots of the story, different from those of the comics, are well developed, but take a little time to set up. We feel from the3rd episode that the goal is to prepare the ground for other seasons. The different pieces of the puzzle are slowly falling into place and we understand, a little late, where all this is supposed to go. Episode 7 is also quite strange because it takes place like an end of season, while there are still 3 episodes before the famous twist that explains that, yes, there will be a sequel. It was necessary to settle part of the story before moving on to the sequel, because not everyone can afford to pull 36 narrative strings at the same time (is not G.A.R Martin who wants!).
In conclusion
Despite a somewhat long set-up, Locke & Key is a very good dark fantasy series, based on the excellent graphic novels of Hill and Rodriguez. Even if Netflix has chosen to offer a consumer version, Locke & Key does not lose its originality and stands out as one of the heavyweights of this beginning of the year.
