Can ‘Feria: The Darkest Light’ Become Netflix’s Next Spanish Hit?

How on Earth do you cope when you’re hit with bombshell that your folks are serial killers? It’s a question that’s recently been answered in Fox procedural Prodigal Son (snitch to the cops before drawing on their sociopathic tendencies to help nail a copycat 10 years later) and unfairly canceled zom-com Santa Clarita Diet (become an accomplice in their efforts to eradicate all wrongdoers while satisfying an appetite for human flesh). The kids in Netflix’s latest Spanish-language original, however, are forced to take another altogether more otherworldly approach.

Feria: The Darkest Light stars Ana Tomeno and Carla Campra as Eva and Sofia, two squabbling sisters whose recovery from a wild night out is terrifyingly interrupted by a SWAT team. While they were partying in their Andalusian mountain hometown, 23 people lost their lives at a nearby abandoned mine – in one of several striking visual images, the similarly-tattooed victims are shown littered across a now blood-red lake. And much to the girls’ horror, their picture-perfect mother (Marta Nieto) and father (Ernest Villegas) are believed to have been the catalyst. 

Sure enough, eerie surveillance footage confirms that both parents were at the scene of the crime, shepherding a group of willing followers into the mine. But their dad was the only individual who waited outside, and their mom was the only individual who didn’t re-emerge entirely naked while gasping for breath. As the accidental exposure to deadly methane theory is dismissed, a much more sinister explanation emerges: the pair were the figureheads of a suicidal cult. 

Just as he did with Elite, one of Netflix’s flagship Spanish shows, co-creator Carlos Montero flits between two timelines, 1975 and 1995, to uncover the mystery, with the former shot stylishly in ominous black and white. Yet while his previous prep school drama was grounded in some form of reality, his collaboration with award-winning noir novelist Agustín Martínez gravitates much more toward the fantastical. 

There’s a darkly atmospheric alternate dimension (unlike many of Netflix’s international genre shows, the impressive CGI here can compete with that of its homegrown), and one which all Cult of Light members must complete five increasingly disturbing rituals to gain access to. And as one intrepid cop first finds out to their cost, they also worship an amphibian-like demon with a fondness for burrowing its way into various human orifices and inducing murderous tendencies.

Feria is at its most effective when it leans fully into the latter’s body horror. Martínez has cited David Cronenberg as a major inspiration for the eight-part series, and there are several scenes which the ‘Baron of Blood’ himself would be proud of – Eva cutting short a TV appeal to stab herself with scissors having spotted worm-like parasites crawl through her skin, for example, or the blatant nod to John Hurt’s gut-busting death in Alien. 

You can’t accuse Feria of skimping on nudity, either. There are just as many orgies (of the deeply unarousing kind) as there are brutal head-bashings, nipping any of the ‘90s Stranger Things comparisons firmly in the bud. This is certainly not a show you can watch with all of the family. Nor is it one that fetishizes its period setting. Only the sighting of a video rental store and the sounds of various early MTV2 favorites signifies we’re in a different decade. 

It’s when Feria travels further back in time that the narrative begins to meander, though. The cult’s deeply unsettling origins story could have been wrapped up in a couple of flashback scenes rather than taking up the entirety of the fourth episode, for one thing. And while the backdrop of General Franco’s dying days adds some political context to proceedings, it feels unnecessary at a point when the story is overstuffed. Martínez and Montero also give Sofia a romance with a grieving son and Eva a bisexual love triangle, throw in a very public coming out and, drawing upon parallels with the Gnostic religion, regularly pontificate about the meaning of our existence. 

Indeed, Feria poses many intriguing questions before reaching its literally monstrous finale. What kind of God would create such a cruel world? Is there more to life than “be born/love/get sick/die?” And why has one of the creepy followers appeared to model himself on “Weird Al” Yankovic? Yet it does so at the expense of both its familial relationships and their responses to the tragedy. 

Campra, perhaps best-known to overseas audiences for playing Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem’s daughter in Everybody Knows, and relative newcomer Tomeno deliver solid lead performances. However, their sisterly bond is frustratingly underwritten, meaning Eva’s desperate quest to save Sofia from the brainwashing bunch of believers fails to pack the emotional punch it’s aiming for. Furthermore, Goya Award-winning actress Nieto (Madre) is largely wasted in a supporting role that often doesn’t require much more than looking vaguely into the supernatural distance.

Should Montero’s plans for two further seasons come to fruition, then perhaps he can instead spend more time delving deeper into family ties than building an over-arching mythology. But Feria: The Darkest Light might just be a little too muddled, and possibly even a little too graphic, to become anything other than a (excuse the pun) cult concern.  

Jon O’Brien (@jonobrien81) is a freelance entertainment and sports writer from the North West of England. His work has appeared in the likes of Vulture, Esquire, Billboard, Paste, i-D and The Guardian.