Apple’s The Changeling overview: a superbly haunted parenting fairy story

For a lot of new dad and mom, the beginning of a kid is a present and trigger for joyous celebration as they welcome new life into their rapidly reworking worlds. However in Apple TV Plus’ arresting new adaptation of Victor LaValle’s novel The Changeling, the arrival of 1 household’s beloved child is only the start of their journey towards understanding how typically the nightmarish fears that hold dad and mom up at night time are all too justified and never practically as irrational as they may appear.

Set largely within the magical worlds of Queens and higher (suppose Washington Heights) Manhattan, The Changeling tells the winding and romantic story of how vintage ebook purchaser Apollo Kagwa (Lakeith Stanfield) and librarian Emma Valentine (Clark Backo) fall in love one fateful winter in 2010. As a lifelong lover of the fantasies that books can plunge folks into, it appears like destiny to Apollo when he first meets Emma one afternoon throughout her shift as she’s doing all the things she will to assist an unhoused man in want and to make it clear to Apollo that she’s something however serious about going out on a date. 

For all of Apollo’s soft-spoken attraction and unthreatening persistence as he begins usually displaying up on the library to ask Emma out, at first he looks like simply one other random man taking pictures his shot who couldn’t probably perceive the depths she incorporates. However when she lastly deigns to provide him an opportunity, they’re each surprised to comprehend that they’ve discovered kindred spirits in each other, and it isn’t lengthy earlier than the pair are passionately in love, married, and anticipating their first little one.

As carefully as showrunner Kelly Marcel’s distinct tackle The Changeling cleaves to LaValle’s — who narrates the sequence — unique story, it provides new depth to Apollo and Emma’s story within the current by fleshing out their dad and mom’ disparate lives up to now at pivotal moments after they made choices that might outline their kids’s futures.

The Changeling first begins to clue you in to one in all its extra attention-grabbing mysteries by highlighting the uncanny similarities between the newlyweds and the moms who raised them. As uniquely wondrous because the circumstances of Apollo and Emma’s beginning a household feels to them, the excessive factors of their love feel and appear rather a lot just like the love that unexpectedly introduced collectively Apollo’s mom Lillian (Alexis Louder up to now, Adina Porter within the current) and father Brian (Jared Abrahamson) in the summertime of 1977.

Usually — particularly in its premiere episode directed by Melina Matsoukas — The Changeling performs like a superbly shot fairy story about Black love within the vein of basic movies like Theodore Witcher’s Love Jones. That stated, as a lot power as Stanfield and Backo put into making you’re feeling the profound connection that binds Emma and Apollo to 1 one other in wholesome methods, The Changeling additionally takes care to border the emotional lows of their relationship as echoes of the identical sort of trauma that devastated each Lillian and Emma’s mom Christine (Samantha Walkes).

However the sequence turns into much more nuanced, thrilling, and disturbing because it begins to weave everybody’s tales collectively right into a haunting exploration of the deep-seated fears that each one dad and mom — particularly these dwelling within the age of social media crammed with #household content material — really feel as they begin taking their kids out into the world.

Very like Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Nation and HBO’s adaptation of that ebook, The Changeling begins to tug from the fantasy canon because it takes a flip for the supernatural that deftly parlays an outdated folktale into a robust exploration of the impression postpartum melancholy can have on moms as particular person folks and households as models.

As a result of Emma’s character is a lot extra fleshed out right here, The Changeling’s story feels far more prefer it’s hers and Apollo’s in equal components, with Backo expertly realizing new and totally different shades to her persona because the elation that first got here with child Brian’s beginning shifts to one thing extra sinister. And by sticking so carefully to the ebook’s depiction of Apollo as a genuinely good father who doesn’t instantly demonize his spouse’s apprehensions about their son, the present’s additionally in a position to preserve sufficient intrigue in order to by no means really feel prefer it’s merely telling a simple spooky story about an idyllic marriage falling aside for “regular” causes.

That very same high quality — staying true to The Changeling’s story as LaValle wrote it with all of its shifting components — is why Apple’s new present sometimes feels prefer it’s getting near being too busy between its a number of interconnected timelines, a large forged of sturdy supporting characters, and central thriller that grows extra complicated because the season unfolds. It’s additionally clear, although, that The Changeling’s inventive workforce has a powerful and gorgeous imaginative and prescient for the place they need to take the sequence. It’s one which makes working your means by means of its eight hour-long episodes an absolute pleasure — even (or particularly, in the event you’re into it) when issues begin getting actual bizarre.

The Changeling additionally stars Samuel T. Herring, Amirah Vann, Malcolm Barrett, and Jane Kaczmarek. The sequence’ first three episodes hit Apple TV Plus on September eighth.