Nature shows tend to have horror baked in. Sure, we watch them to be educated, but also for the alarmingly gasp-inducing, uncomfortably emotional moments: killer whales gobbling adorable baby seals, furious lions battling each other for supremacy, uncomfortably large spiders just being themselves… you know how it goes. Horror studio Blumhouse is leaning hard into that idea with Nightmares of Nature, a new documentary series coming to Netflix.
A joint production of Blumhouse Television and Plimsoll Productions, Nightmares of Nature has a Netflix-familiar narrator in Stranger Things‘ Maya Hawke. A press release teases it as a “natural history and horror series,” and further emphasizes the peril by noting “each season follows three animal characters facing all the horrors and monsters nature can throw at them.” Two seasons are arriving soon, each consisting of three 45-minute episodes.
Here’s a trailer, followed by more details about the seasons: A Cabin in the Woods (we see what in the Evil Dead you did there, Blumhouse) and Lost in the Jungle.
Season one, A Cabin in the Woods, premieres September 30 and is “set in the perfectly haunting world of the North American woods. Our three characters (a soon-to-be-mother mouse, a young bachelor raccoon, and a froglet who has seen terrible things) quickly discover how scary the woods truly are and find themselves in search of sanctuary. They stumble upon an old cabin in the woods, thinking it a safe haven, they soon discover their nightmares have really only just begun…”
Hopefully, nobody gets trapped in a Deadite-infested basement. Then, October 28 brings season two, Lost in the Jungle. These episodes are “set deep in the creepy Central American rainforest, a place with more creative ways to die than anywhere else on Earth. For our three characters (a young opossum, a newly hatched iguana, and a feisty jumping spider) the nightmare of staying alive in the jungle escalates fast when they discover an abandoned laboratory deep in the jungle. And before they know it, lost in this unnatural labyrinth, with a new monster hiding behind every corner, they are in the struggle of their lives to get out before it is too late…”
I was already nervous about the spider element, but an abandoned laboratory? That is never good.
What do you think about Nightmares of Nature—intriguing, or a little bit over-gimmicky? The first season arrives September 30, followed by the second on October 28.