‘Yaga’ Review: Carrie-Anne Moss and Hudson Williams in AMC+’s Intriguing but Undercooked Brew of Modern Crime and Ancient Folklore

Perhaps it is only appropriate that Yaga, the new genre-bending thriller from AMC+ and Crave, should feel so devilishly difficult to pin down. After all, it’s only doing what myths have always done, which is transform — to reflect a new context, introduce a fresh perspective, impart an updated moral.

And while it takes some time to see what shape this version of the Baba Yaga tale (as in Slavic folklore, not, as is explained by a couple different characters, the movie John Wick) might take, it’s easy enough to fall under its spell at first. The atmosphere is deliciously chilly, the cast stuffed with actors you’ve loved in other things. But the longer it runs, the thinner its charms grow — leaving behind a show that’s enjoyable enough to binge, but not quite sharp enough to treasure.

Yaga

The Bottom Line Plays hard to get.

Airdate: Friday, Oct. 23 (AMC+)
Cast: Carrie-Anne Moss, Clark Backo, Noah Reid, Hudson Williams, Sheila McCarthy
Creator: Kat Sandler

Adapted by Kat Sandler from her own play, Yaga opens at a point of uncertainty about whether there even is a mystery to be solved at all, though one presumes we would not all be gathered here if there were not. At some point in the last few days, Henry (Hudson Williams), the spoiled 22-year-old scion of a fish processing magnate, has disappeared from his giant mansion perched at the edge of a Canadian island. Well, maybe.

Carson (Clark Backo), the no-nonsense Whittock PD detective assigned to the case, assumes he’s just out partying; even his dorkier doppelgänger of a roommate, Logan (also Williams), admits Henry’s prone to doing things like jet off to Paris on a last-minute romantic getaway. But there’s reason to suspect his absence has something to do with Katherine (Carrie-Anne Moss), a biology professor nicknamed the “Boner Beast” for rumors she sleeps with her students.

Henry’s family are concerned enough to have sent in their own smarmy private investigator, Rapp (Noah Reid), though not quite concerned enough to cut short their own business trip to Japan.

In any case, the kid must be found. As Carson and Rapp’s search for Henry deepens, Yaga cuts a jagged (though, at this point, well-trod by shows like Hulu’s Furious or even Netflix’s East of Eden) path through themes of wealth, male entitlement, female rage and the purpose of myth. All of it flows toward a reconsideration of the legend of Baba Yaga herself, who bemoans her own malignment in raspy voiceovers that open and close each chapter. “I wonder why you tell stories of the wicked old witch when no one will stay and get to know me,” she complains. “I’m very funny, you know.”

And she can be. One of Yaga’s most potent assets is its tone: equal parts eerie and sexy and mischievous, with occasional flashes of lurid violence. You know a crime drama’s not going to take itself overly seriously when its version of a slick private dick is introduced tripping over his own feet immediately after an onlooker comments on how cool he looks. You know you’re in for something spookier than a run-of-the-mill kidnapping when dead birds, hallucinogenic concoctions and strange ancient symbols quickly become recurring motifs.

And you know you’re in for something uneasily horny when our relatable point of entry into this seductive world, Carson, is first shown devouring “fairy smut” (i.e., a romantasy novel) on the job. In Yaga, even an explanation of something as dry as how ears work can sound suspiciously like dirty talk. “A whisper, a moan, a groan,” Katherine purrs, her voice as smooth as the whiskey in her glass. “Your bones listen. Before your brain understands, your bones say yes.”

Armed with that unexpectedly playful tone and loaded with enough bizarre clues and creepy discoveries to keep up a brisk pace, Yaga’s half-hour episodes (seven of eight were sent to critics) practically fly by; it’s the kind of show you can devour in a sitting without even meaning to do so. But it’s also one that starts to feel less substantive as its early promise gives way to uneven execution.

While Sandler’s lack of preciousness about her own source material — she’s freely rearranged plot points and added characters, such that even those familiar with the original might be thrown for a few loops — saves Yaga from the airlessness so common to stage adaptations, her handling of the expanded scope isn’t quite so deft.

Her cast help make up for some of the script’s thinness. Moss is the icy attention-grabber, turning the very quality Yaga points out should make her invisible — her maturity — into a nigh-irresistible source of sexual power; if there’s a single star turn that makes this whole experience worthwhile, it’s hers. In a more restrained role, Backo also acquits herself quite nicely, mapping out Carson’s interiority through the private, silent reactions she allows herself when she thinks no one’s looking.

But while Williams demonstrates admirable range with his dual role as obnoxiously cocky Henry and uncomfortably withdrawn Logan, the characters get less screen time, and thus less depth, than one might hope. And though Reid does his best with the brazenly flirtatious, casually chauvinistic Rapp, Yaga badly overplays its hand with his womanizing. Unless there’s a last-minute reveal that the whole town has been dosed with a love potion, not even Reid’s considerable magnetism can justify the immediacy and intensity with which every single gal Rapp encounters practically throws her underwear at him.

The coyness that initially seemed so enticing turns underwhelming as it becomes apparent that Yaga is better at suggesting hidden depths than excavating them, and gesturing at grand ideas than shining new light on them. Even the central question of what’s happened to Henry becomes less urgent the more time we spend in Whittock, among an insular cast of citizens who barely seem to notice the guy is missing, let alone care why. Yaga concocts one entertainingly heady brew, thanks to its beguiling mood and fearless cast. It’s just not, in the end, a fully satisfying one.