A cult escapee is temporarily welcomed into an empathetic home but things aren't as they seem.

 Devil in Ohio is a Netflix suspense limited series based on a book of the same name by  Daria Polatin which follows the story of Satanic cult escapee Mae (Madeline Arthur) who ends up in a Psychiatric ward and eventually in the home of an empathetic Psychiatrist Dr Suzanne Mathis (Emily Deschanel). The 8 episodes unravel how Mae's presence changes the family's dynamic (they honestly weren't doing so great before) and the lengths Mae's cult will go to retrieve their golden goose.

Spoilers ahead


Mae's home was in Amon County which everyone constantly compares to the Amish and there's never anyone on the road, just miles of greenery - the idea is that she comes from a creepy town. While it's easy to conclude that Mae is the victim, having a large pentagram carved on her back and whatnot, it soon becomes clear that Mae has an agenda of her own which is to have Suzanne all to herself. Mae's obsession with Dr Suzanne is a little similar to another cult story (Apple TV's Servant) where a cult escapee inserts herself into the life of a family because she's obsessed with the matriarch of the house. But where Servant opts to leave certain things vague and to the viewers' imagination, Devil in Ohio is more explicit in its intentions.

Being a miniseries with no chance of a Season 2, Netflix did its best to wrap Devil in Ohio in a pretty little bow but there were still a few unanswered mysteries.



What was Helen's reason for being a Grade A arse?

One of the Devil in Ohio dynamics we quickly caught onto is that Helen (Alisha Newton) is the queen bee at her high school dating the captain of the football team. She's super popular and her sister, Jules (Xaria Dotson)... is not. So she constantly pretends to not know her sister in school and mostly ignores her - even at home. But according to Jules, Helen wasn't always so aloof, they used to be really close and sometimes braid each other's hair and other cute sisterly stuff but things changed. One of Helen's [former?] friends, Tatiana (Djouliet Amara) while stating that Helen used to date a girl also said something along those lines - Helen didn't only dump her sister but her group of friends.

Why did Helen change and become such a mean girl? We never figure it out and we also never figure out what exactly is so groundbreaking about what Tatiana says to make her revert because next thing we know, she breaks up with her boyfriend and is back on good terms with her sister. The change is so abrupt that viewers could get dizzy from it.


Was Peter Mathis deliberately lowballed?

For me, this has to be the biggest mystery. How Peter (Sam Jaeger) loses the house is quite suspicious. He builds and customizes a house specifically for a couple only for them to back out of it at the last minute. Now, Peter is clearly a little naive to have invested all of that money and time on nothing more than a handshake (hello? contract?) but the way and manner the couple backed out was quite brow-raising and so were his subsequent efforts to get someone else to buy the house. Even super-influential Cheryl (Laura Soltis) who promises to help him out ends up giving him a ridiculous offer and while fans in this subreddit talk about how Peter's ego prevented him from taking the offer, its easy to empathize with him. If you know you're getting a ridiculous offer, it's difficult to take it.

The couple the house was designed for asked for Carrara marbles (what on earth is that even?) and porcelain doorknobs (fricking porcelain doorknobs!). It seems awfully close to when a potential buyer is trying to back out of a sale by asking for it in lime purple.

If Peter's troubles had started once Mae got into the house, we'd blame Mae and her cult as Peter eventually does when the house burned down. But the couple backed out of the handshake agreement before Suzanne brought Mae into their home. Something is definitely fishy and it'd have been satisfying to know what happened. Looking at the event before the fire and the subsequent investigation of the fire, it's difficult to believe the property was burned down by the cult. Perhaps the people who had colluded to lowball Peter Mathis saw an opportunity and took it. Perhaps, Peter burned down the house himself so he could get a payout - he was pretty desperate.



Why exactly did Suzanne get to keep the house and the escapee?

Devil in Ohio reveals that the major reason Suzanne was so empathetic towards Mae is that just like Mae, Suzanne had also come from an abusive home and she was trying to feel less guilty about leaving her mother behind by saving Mae. One would expect that once Mae is saved (from the ritual and the claws of her cult), Suzanne would be able to move on but that's clearly not the case. In the finale, we see that Suzanne went against her own promise of sending Mae to a home for troubled teens and is instead living at home with Mae. And she has a new promise to let Mae go once she helps Mae get a job.

What happened to not getting distracted from what matters, Suzanne? Is therapy even helping, Suzanne? And just by the theory of numbers, Peter and the girls should have stayed at the house while Suzanne and her newfound stray look for a place to stay.



Bonus mystery: Was Mae ever genuine?

 One of the interesting dynamics of Devil in Ohio was watching Mae navigate a new 'free' life where she could freely compliment people. Mae quickly forms a bond with high school outcast, Jules and she seems to genuinely like Jules and want to please her but later she lies to her and snatches her crush. It's a little hilarious watching Jules accuse Mae of the accusable while the latter looks genuinely confused. Later, when Mae also snags Helen's newly dumped boyfriend, she also seems confused as to why Helen was upset. 

Did Mae, having grown up in a cult where social dynamics are different actually not know what she did wrong or was she just playing dumb? It's a mystery I'm fine never knowing.

A submystery of Mae is why wasn't she seeing a Psychologist? Dr Suzanne Mathis goes to mandated therapy after flouting clinic rules and she realizes that there were consequences for ignoring her childhood trauma. How could she not see the same for Mae? 


Verdict

While the reviews have been brutal towards Devil in Ohio (rated 45% on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.9/10 on IMDB), it was an easy watch and is definitely bingeworthy. There's just enough going on to keep your interest and while the Satanic cult's mystery has been critiqued as being a little lacking, Mae is an interesting enough character to keep going.

I'm going to go against the critic wave with this one, not sorry. Not every show has to be a cluster of mindfuckery. 

7.5/10. 


Devil in Ohio is currently streaming on Netflix