Wayward Review: Toni Collette Is at Her Villainous Best in This Chilling Netflix Mystery Series

If a Toni Collette character gives you a lingering hug and promises to heal your childhood trauma, run for the hills.

Like many elements of Wayward, Collette's villain role is an obvious but effective choice, taking aim at the inherent creepiness of the so-called troubled teen industry. As the director of a for-profit boarding school for wayward youth, her character Evelyn Wade is somewhere between a prison warden and a cult leader, advertising her ability to "solve the problem of adolescence" through "groundbreaking therapeutic techniques." It's an ideal role for the magnetic Collette, who moves smoothly between steely authoritarianism and cloying empathy while dispensing Evelyn's malevolent brand of therapy.

Wayward is the second original series from writer, actor, and comedian Mae Martin, following their semi-autobiographical dramedy Feel Good. This time Martin opts for a darker tone, drawing inspiration from a childhood friend who was banished to a troubled teen institution during high school.

Set in 2003, this miniseries stars Martin as an anxious young cop named Alex, who moves to rural Vermont for a fresh start. The town of Tall Pines seems peaceful and low-stress: an ideal place for Alex and his pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon), to settle before their baby arrives. In fact, Laura chose Tall Pines specifically because she knew they'd be welcome there. After spending her teen years at the nearby Tall Pines Academy — the school run by Evelyn Wade — she's already familiar with many of the townspeople, who are thrilled to see her return.

7.5

Wayward

at Netflix

Like

• Mae Martin's charmingly awkward protagonist
• The oppressive atmosphere of the cult-like Tall Pines Academy
• The engaging pace will keep you coming back for more

Dislike

• Some elements are a bit too predictable

This idyllic dream doesn't last long. On his first day at the local police department, Alex encounters a runaway student who seems terrified out of his mind. There's clearly something off about Tall Pines, suggesting a peculiar symbiotic relationship between the town and the school. But every time Alex tries to voice his suspicions about, say, the worrying volume of missing children, one of his perky new neighbors is ready with a reassuringly plausible explanation, gaslighting him from the get-go. It's the kind of mystery where a lot of the answers are signposted in advance, but the tension lies in watching the trap tighten its grip around our well-meaning protagonist. 

While it's easy for us to mistrust Tall Pines' invasively friendly New Age vibe, we can also understand its appeal as an inclusive and close-knit community: an obvious reason for Laura and Alex to downplay all the red flags, especially with a baby on the way. Bucking our expectations for small-town America, it's a welcoming neighborhood with a diverse population, who happily accept Alex's identity as a trans man. When Laura introduces a gay friend who used to attend the academy, Alex cracks an ill-advised joke about Evelyn trying to pray the gay away, assuming (quite understandably) that the school has a homophobic ethos. But Laura's friend gets defensive, explaining that Evelyn actually helped him to accept his identity. All of Evelyn's former students are like this, full of earnest warmth and gratitude toward her for turning their lives around.

The reality of the school is a lot less cozy. While Alex attempts to investigate from the outside, two new students are getting their first taste of Evelyn's brutal therapy: Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) and Leila (Alyvia Alyn Lind), a pair of codependent best friends. Compared to some of the other kids — hardened by years in foster care and juvenile detention centers — Abbie and Leila are naive newbies, incarcerated after some comparatively unremarkable adolescent rebellion. But everyone at Tall Pines Academy receives the same strict treatment, in a system designed to beat kids down and then reshape them into constructive members of society. Reminiscent of cult brainwashing tactics, Evelyn is particularly fond of a game known as "hot seat," where kids are forced to bully and interrogate each other in a state of radical honesty.

Early on, we're introduced to the show's most disturbing image: a life-size painting of a locked door with scratch marks around the handle, inviting us to imagine a desperate prisoner trying to escape the inescapable. Evelyn is clearly doing something to these kids' minds. But what? If Laura arrived at Tall Pines as a rebellious youth but graduated with a genuine fondness for her abuser, what happened in between?

As Alex, Abbie, and Leila acclimatize to their respective sides of the Tall Pines community, their experiences complicate our understanding of why (and how) a person might wind up joining a cult. It's easy to lay the blame on Evelyn as a singular villain, but this kind of social ecosystem can only exist if it enforces its own rules, whether it's the school counselors policing their teenage charges, or a more sympathetic character like Laura trying to fit in with her neighbors. As an outsider, it's always easy to say you just wouldn't succumb to cult recruitment, but Martin's creative team have done their research, setting out the complicated psychological reasons why almost anyone can be bullied, charmed, or otherwise manipulated into becoming a true believer.

Chances are, you've seen other mystery dramas with a similarly eerie small-town vibe, where a newcomer tries to excavate local secrets and gets stonewalled in the process. Wayward sticks close to some familiar beats of the genre but thrives on its well-realized characters — most obviously with Mae Martin's socially awkward Alex and the relatable ensemble cast of Tall Pines students.

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Martin's vision take cues from a very real, very toxic industry, notorious for preying on the flaws of the U.S. education system and the lack of basic rights awarded to minors. As the show points out on several occasions, Evelyn can basically do whatever she wants with these kids, because their parents (or the state) have signed over legal custody. However, Wayward isn't aiming for a hard-hitting exposé of reality. It's setting the scene for a well-observed but entertaining mystery, tugging us back and forth between Alex's burgeoning suspicions and the urgency of the school's young inmates.

My one caveat is that these ideas would all benefit from a smidge of additional weirdness. The town's Wicker Man-meets-wellness-retreat vibe is all well and good, but Wayward lacks the creative ambition of something like The OA, or the outright supernatural wackiness of From. Without that extra edge, it's just as well that the cast is so full of personality, offering the dual appeal of an authentic teen drama and a gripping psychological thriller. 

Premieres: Thursday, Sept. 25 on Netflix
Who's in it: Mae Martin, Toni Collette, Sarah Gadon, Sydney Topliffe, Alyvia Alyn Lind
Who's behind it: Mae Martin (creator and co-showrunner), Ryan Scott (co-showrunner), Euros Lyn (director)
For fans of: Mae Martin, Holes, eerie small-town mysteries
Episodes watched: 8 of 8