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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
11
Mixed:
5
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews
Oct 2, 2023
Season 2 Review:
The finale’s payoff also cleverly drives home the message that those genre-spurred frustrations are pointedly there so we didn’t forget that this is a story about a woman who is ignored. It also comes with some brilliant one-liners (“You can’t ever get rid of mental illness. That shit is like glitter,” Joan says in the premiere episode) and comes with a stacked cast of character actresses.
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Mar 3, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The best scary stories find their frights in real-life fears, and the genre is rich with ones that explore the feminine grotesque—Black Swan and Rosemary’s Baby come to mind. Shining Vale brings humor to that equation, both laughing at and dramatizing the scary aspects of gender norms. The result is a show that’s smart enough to keep viewers guessing as it pokes fun at modern society, its characters, and even its audience.
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Mar 4, 2022
Season 1 Review:
“Shining Vale” has a honed sense of humor, usually (and especially) when it’s least expected. ... What’s more surprising about “Shining Vale” is how it ably counterbalances the writing’s comedic throughline with genuinely creepy touches of horror that might feel familiar to fans of the earlier, most effective seasons of “American Horror Story.”
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Oct 13, 2023
Season 2 Review:
Pat’s psychiatric facility, with its generically inky green light, screaming patients strapped to gurneys, and generally depressing air is pretty over the top, and a house creaking in its joints and beckoning people through suddenly open doors doesn’t really grab us. It’s almost like Shining Vale needs to go for the horror jugular first, before it integrates its solid jokes and noteworthy themes.
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Mar 3, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Creators Jeff Astrof (Trial & Error) and Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe) front-load Shining Vale‘s least original elements, at the expense of the witty raunch that is Horgan’s trademark. ... Suffice to say that if you can hang on until episode 3, you’ll find a stranger, more amusing haunted-house story lurking behind all the peeling wallpaper.
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ColliderMar 4, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Ultimately, Shining Vale wants to be a horror-comedy, but doesn’t go hard enough into either genre. ... Luckily, the characterizations by a talented cast are enough to draw you in and keep you entertained, even if Shining Vale's genre trappings leave a lot more to be desired.
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The TelegraphMar 7, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Shining Vale – which Horgan has co-written with Jeff Astrof – is billed as a comedy-horror but it hovers around in the space between the two because it’s neither screamingly funny nor remotely frightening. ... At least Shining Vale is attempting to tackle it in a light-hearted style, rather than bleak drama.
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Mar 4, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Rosemary, Joan, Pat and Gaynor represent unhappy women from four generations facing different kinds of societal pressures, internalizing dissatisfaction in similar ways. That element of the show is thoughtful and maybe even provocative, and in 28-minute episodic doses — critics have been sent seven of eight episodes — the intellectual points land often. The genre points, less frequently.
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Mar 3, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The series gets more entertaining, and the characters get more interesting, as people other than Pat begin to spiral into their own crises. ... It's just that the mystery surrounding Rosemary is teased out too slowly, leaving the show to get distracted by basic family drama. Good bones can only take this haunted house so far.
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The PlaylistMar 3, 2022
Season 1 Review:
While the story whips up some acute psychological comedy about women in different generations experiencing and wrestling with the same mental illness, its supernatural attempts are junky. ... “Shining Vale” is the kind of series that just does not warrant its length, especially as its frugal supernatural points just barely nudge Pat to its larger scheme.
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Mar 7, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Shining Vale may get better during its first season as we find out what’s actually driving this story. But its first episode was a loud mess of a show that seemed to be more satisfied with giving Courteney Cox as many chances to swear as possible than to actually establish its characters.
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