When Nine Perfect Strangers debuted in 2021, it hooked audiences with its black‐comedy premise: ten city‐slickers retreating to Tranquillum House, a luxury wellness spa where cultish director Masha (Nicole Kidman) microdoses unsuspecting guests and spies on them around the clock. Despite the cartoonish cruelty—hallucinations of dead children, surprise blood draws and psychotropic shocks—the show rode Kidman’s unnervingly still visage and sharp script adaptations of Liane Moriarty’s novel. By season’s end, Masha fled to freedom under cloud of federal investigations, leaving unresolved questions primed for a second installment.
New Setting, Familiar Faces?
In season two, Masha resurfaces at an isolated Alpine “asylum retreat,” Foreshadowingum House, built in a converted sanatorium high in the mountains. She’s joined by her reformed lab partner, Austrian scientist Martin (Lucas Englander), and is free to resume her questionable experiments under the guise of cutting‐edge wellness. Gone are California’s palm trees and design‐your‐own tea blends; in their place, snow‐capped pines, wood‐paneled corridors and the lingering smell of formaldehyde in the once‐famous taxidermy museum next door.
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Supporting Cast: New Recruits and Returning Guests
The original’s ensemble—Bobby Cannavale’s recovering addict Tony, Melissa McCarthy’s novelist Frances—do not return, leaving a mostly new roster of wealthy, damaged guests:
• Christine Baranski as Victoria: A brittle, self‐assured matriarch seeking reconciliation with her daughter, Imogen (Annie Murphy).
• Annie Murphy as Imogen: Victoria’s anxious child, desperate to heal familial wounds and revive her own stalled life.
• Murray Bartlett: The unfortunate star of a children’s TV show who finds his public confession of sexuality has upended his career and marriage.
• Ara Aydin: A former piano prodigy whose fingers have mysteriously failed her, despite her loving partner’s encouragement.
• Additional Guests: A billionaire investor and his slack‐jawed son; a crisis‐prone nun and her hidden past; plus various romantic pairings and sibling rivalries.
The Plot’s Prescription: Surveillance, Spiked Cocktails and Alpine Antics
As before, Foreshadowingum House is rigged with hidden cameras feeding Masha real‐time intel. Guests don biometric collars, and Martin’s “data‐driven” approach ensures that every drop of blood, every seizure‐like twitch is logged. Masha’s bespoke “cocktails”—a mix of mushrooms, amphetamines or designer benzodiazepines—are dosed by personality profile: Imogen’s anxiety, Victoria’s control issues, the pianist’s self‐doubt.
Key Scenes and Set Pieces
• Museum Trip: A visit to the local taxidermy collection—walls lined with stuffed bears and jackrabbits—sets the tone: surreal, creepy, but ultimately a missed opportunity. As guests wander glassy‐eyed, the sequence drags, underscoring how ludicrous it is to watch grown adults gape at static animals.
• Snowshoe Summit: A forced “mind‐body” exercise on narrow paths above a sheer drop, providing some genuine vertigo but little narrative momentum.
• Data Reveals: Martin unveils a heat map of guests’ stress points overlaid on the building’s floorplan—a visual gimmick that briefly impresses before petering out.
Thematic Misfires: Where the New Season Falls Short
- Lack of Satirical Bite
The first season skewered the wellness industry’s kitschy absurdities—infrared saunas, chakra cleanses, “energy medicine.” Here, Masha’s methods are simply presented as more elaborate and European, without much critical or comedic edge. There’s no meaningful commentary on the hubris of tech‐driven therapy or the performative self‐help culture that fuels retreats worldwide. - Underdeveloped Characters
With eight new guests to juggle, the show sacrifices depth for surface‐level quirks. Victoria’s icy perfection, Imogen’s teenage tantrums, the pianist’s silent suffering—each is undercut by a script that flits to the next malfunction. While Annie Murphy and Christine Baranski deliver fine turns, the lack of emotional stakes makes it hard to care who succeeds or snaps. - Overreliance on Drugs and Surveillance
When every revelatory twist can be blamed on a new mushroom variant or a hacked camera feed, plot tension evaporates. The moment a relationship strains, Masha administers a sedative to reset the dynamic; when a guest breaks into tears, Martin logs it for “future phases.” This deus‐ex‐mushroom approach robs the drama of coherence and character agency.
Nicole Kidman’s Rediscovered Expressiveness
On the plus side, Kidman’s new wig—a sleek, shoulder‐length bob in glossy ash—allows her to move her face more fluidly than the motion‐less blonde helmet of season one. Occasional flickers of empathy or vengeance across her eyes suggest the emotional complexity hinted at in the finale. But even Kidman’s best moments—her triumphant speeches to a celeb‐craving audience; her private, weary glance at Martin—cannot sustain a show that struggles to ground her actions in believable stakes.
Standout Performances
• Christine Baranski: As always, Baranski brings razor‐sharp poise to Victoria, turning a wealthy control freak into a figure both laughable and pitiable. Her rebuke of Masha—“You turned my daughter into a science experiment”—lands with genuine force.
• Murray Bartlett: His subplot about a gay children’s presenter trying to rebuild trust with his family is handled with warmth, though like others it ends up undercooked given limited screen time.
• Lucas Englander: Martin could have been a comic foil—stolid data nerd to Masha’s mad genius—but instead remains a cipher whose motivations are scarcely explored. Englander does his best to project empathy, but the script offers little to show.
Production Values and Alpine Aesthetic
Visually, the series excels: glacial vistas, retro sanatorium corridors, and an ethereal score that blends Alpine folk motifs with electronic drones. Costume and set design evoke the chilling glamour of horror classics. Yet the sumptuous visuals only underscore how little inner life the script feeds its characters.
Where to From Here? Glimmers of Hope?
Foreshadowingum House’s final episodes hint at deeper conspiracies: Masha’s past in Eastern Europe, Martin’s secret funding source, and a possible link between the asylum’s owners and a shadowy biotech firm. If season three leans into these larger‐scale intrigues—giving Masha a genuine adversary beyond her own hubris—it might recapture the original’s dark comic spark. But as it stands, Nine Perfect Strangers season two feels like a series of retreat exercises gone stale.
Conclusion: A Retreat Not Worth Taking
Nicole Kidman’s improved wig and Baranski’s steely grace offer fleeting pleasures, but the show’s core problem remains: when every twist is another drug‐induced hallucination or surveillance revelation, the human drama flattens to window dressing. Without sharper satire, deeper character work or stakes that transcend the next psilocybin cocktail, there’s little reason to sign up for eight hours of Foreshadowingum House’s chilly corridors. Instead of emerging cleansed, viewers may simply feel bored—and perhaps a little drugged.
Verdict: Disappointing – ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
Key Strengths
• Kidman’s regained expressiveness
• Baranski’s magnetic performance
• Stunning Alpine cinematography
Key Weaknesses
• Overreliance on drug gimmicks
• Thin, unrelatable characters
• Lack of satirical or emotional depth
