‘Nightmares’ was an incredibly popular literary franchise during the 90s, to the point of giving rise to a television series of up to four seasons that marked many kids of the time. Behind her was the writer RL Stine, the same author behind the series of comics that have served as inspiration for ‘On the other side of the institute’, a series that Disney + premiered on October 13.
The truth is that ‘On the other side of the institute’ has not made too much noise with its landing at Disney +, something that may be due to trying to mix two elements that a priori should not marry well. And it is that you can see her attempt to become a contemporary heiress of ‘Nightmares’, but at the same time she reduces its more sinister side to the minimum expression for the benefit of one more tone in the vein of a Disney Channel live-action series.
Flying low
The first season of ‘On the other side of the institute’ consists of eight self-concluding and complementary stories, since beyond the fantastic as a common nexus, there are no unnecessary repetitions from one to the other. Well, all of them have quite obvious morals that you see yourself coming from afar, both when the resolution is friendlier for its protagonists and when things are a little more complicated.
This means that ‘On the other side of the institute’ has much of a moral tale, opting for softer approaches to premises that could have been developed much more in another way. There I suspect that there will be viewers who end up a bit frustrated by how obvious it can be, reducing the fantastic element in most cases to nothing more than the pretext rather than the motivation behind the story.
There is an exception that does play a little more with its premise but without ever twisting it. Interestingly, the two episodes that stand out the most are both signed by David katzenberg, but with different approaches. On the one hand we have ‘My Monster’, the only one of the entire first season of ‘On the other side of the institute’ that takes advantage of the most terrifying side of its history, while ‘Planting a face’ is more direct and exaggerated, but knows how to move successfully in quicksand.
All good shake
The rest of the episodes end up depending more on their cast, where we will find several well-known faces, young actors such as those of the ascendant prevailing. Mckenna grace, recently seen in ‘Maligno’, Gabriel Bateman, the protagonist of the recent remake of ‘Diabolical Doll’, or Lexi Underwood, known for having given life to one of the main characters of ‘Little Fires Everywhere’. The talent is there, but the series demands so little from them that they hardly manage to raise the general interest somewhat.
And is that ‘On the other side of the institute’ is a series too soft. Nor is it that he expected the same approach from ‘The Street of Terror’, the remarkable Netflix trilogy that also started from a work by Stine, but something with a little more punch. It is true that once you adjust your expectations to what the Disney + series is willing to give you, well you can have a nice time. After all, they are stories compressed in less than half an hour that always go forward, without time to go around the same thing.
In other words, ‘On the other side of the institute’ seems designed to leave no trace, it is as if it settled for giving us eight soft stories, something to some extent surprising being Seth Grahame-Smith behind her. It is not that I am his biggest fan, but until now he had shown a certain fondness for the transgressor, something of which there is no trace here, since everything is comfortable and easy to digest, like a thoroughly beaten puree so that there is no stumbling. any.
In short
‘On the other side of the institute’ is a bit of the natural heir to those parents who did not decide not to let their children play outside the home in case something happened to them. Obviously they are much safer, but the sense of adventure is almost completely lost to the benefit of a placidity to a certain extent pleasant, but not at all memorable.