General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Marianne (2019 TV series)

Marianne is a French supernatural horror television series created by Samuel Bodin and released on Netflix on September 13, 2019. Its eight episodes follow Emma Larsimon, a successful horror novelist who returns to her coastal hometown in Brittany and finds that the witch from her books, Marianne, has begun acting in the real world.¹ It was Netflix's first French-language horror series.²

Key fact	Detail
Original run	All 8 episodes released September 13, 2019 on Netflix¹
Created by	Samuel Bodin, co-written with Quoc Dang Tran³
Lead cast	Victoire Du Bois (Emma Larsimon), Lucie Boujenah (Camille), Tiphaine Daviot (Aurore), Ralph Amoussou (Seby)⁴
Production	Empreinte Digitale and Federation Entertainment; filmed November 17, 2018 to March 7, 2019 in Brittany and Île-de-France³^•⁵
Critical scores	100% Tomatometer from 16 reviews and 83% Popcornmeter on Rotten Tomatoes; 7.3/10 on IMDb¹^•⁶
Status	Canceled after one season in January 2020⁷

Spoilers

Premise

Emma Larsimon, a novelist in her thirties, has built a career on a series of young-adult horror novels drawn from recurring nightmares about a witch named Marianne. In the opening episode she announces she will stop writing horror, and an unnerving visit from an old acquaintance draws her back to her hometown.⁴ The suicide of a former classmate, Caroline, forces her return to the coastal village, where a succession of paranormal events with real, bloody consequences begins; their origin traces back to her adolescence and the nightmares that have tormented her since.²

The season's episodes are titled "Your Dreams", "Tradition", "Not an Easy Person", "Beautiful Moment", "You Left Her", "Memories", "Too Young to Handle It", and "Tuesday". Episode 5 flashes back fifteen years to a ritual the friends performed at their old school to drive away Emma's nightmares, and the finale centers on a priest's attempt to banish Marianne.⁴

Production

Samuel Bodin created, wrote, and directed the series with co-writer Quoc Dang Tran, whose credits include 10% and Nox. The production company Empreinte Digitale approached Bodin asking whether he had a fantasy story to develop as a series.⁵ It was produced by Empreinte Digitale with Federation Entertainment.³ Shooting ran from November 17, 2018 to March 7, 2019 in Brittany and Île-de-France.⁵ The music was composed by Thomas Cappeau.⁸

The cast is led by Victoire Du Bois, with Lucie Boujenah as Camille, Tiphaine Daviot as the adult Aurore, Ralph Amoussou as Seby, and Alban Lenoir and Mireille Herbstmeyer in supporting roles.⁴^•⁵ Herbstmeyer's performance as the elderly Madame Daugeron drew particular attention; one retrospective account credits her with building the character's disturbing quality through gestures, posture, and marked expressiveness rather than heavy effects.⁹

Reception

Critical response was strongly positive internationally. Rotten Tomatoes recorded a 100% Tomatometer from 16 reviews, with a critics consensus calling the series "smart and scary" and "pure nightmare fuel", alongside an 83% audience Popcornmeter.¹ Reviewers repeatedly compared it to Stephen King's work: Polygon's Toussaint Egan described a premise combining It and Misery with "viscerally unsettling visuals", and Bloody Disgusting called it "nightmares personified".¹⁰ King himself tweeted on September 27, 2019 that the show would scare viewers who enjoy being scared and that it had "a Stephen King vibe".¹⁰

French critics were cooler. AlloCiné's aggregation of 11 press reviews averaged 3.1 out of 5, with Le Figaro calling it an effective horror series that finally matched Netflix's French ambitions, while Vanity Fair dismissed it as amateurish and Les Inrockuptibles found it a too-predictable variation on fiction contaminating reality.¹¹ Le Monde praised it as a "terrifying and jubilant" series carried by Victoire Du Bois, alternating fright scenes, suspense, jump scares, humor, and emotion.² Viewer ratings diverged by platform: 7.3/10 on IMDb from about 23,000 ratings, against 3.2/5 from AlloCiné users.⁶^•¹²

Audience reaction abroad was intense. A 2023 academic study of French horror quotes viewer tweets collected by the culture site Pop Buzz describing the show as the "most terrifying" Netflix had made, with viewers reporting being "scared enough to cry" and unable to sleep.¹³

Cancellation

Netflix canceled the series in January 2020 after one season.⁷ Bodin, who confirmed the news on Instagram, later explained the decision: for a French series, Netflix looked only at the number of French viewers who had finished the entire season, and that number was too low, despite the show's international success.¹³ In a later interview with Bloody Disgusting he described what he had planned for an unproduced second season.¹⁴

Legacy

The series has remained a reference point among horror viewers since cancellation. TechRadar described it in 2024 as a "quiet hit" that ranks among the best Netflix shows for horror fans, noting that the single season functions as a stand-alone story without unresolved cliffhangers.¹⁰ A Spanish-language retrospective ranked it 27th in a list of the 50 best horror series in history.⁹ Scholars of French horror treat it as a rare example of a French genre production with widespread international critical acclaim, one that draws on US horror traditions, particularly King's It and 1980s nostalgia, while remaining distinctly French in setting, language, and form.¹³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026