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Tony DiTerlizzi’ popular sci-fi book series migrates to Apple TV+, telling a dystopian tale about a lonely girl, friendship and family that families just might like.
You know what they say: What goes around, comes around. Although that probably wasn’t on Jamie Tanner’s mind while he planned his luxury vacation.
To be fair, a few weeks in a villa on the beaches of Greece is pretty standard for the Tanners. As a successful venture capitalist, Jamie has a life many would kill for: His wife, Nat, is a former fashion model; he has millions of dollars; and when a bit of bad press comes around, he can simply whisk his family away to Greece to lay low until it blows over.
But there’s a hitch in Jamie’s getaway plans. Nat invites her best friend, Jules, on the trip, along with her husband, Damien, and teenage daughter, Milly. And Jules extends the invitation to Adam, Milly’s tutor, who seems as perfect as the picturesque Greek landscape. Handsome, polite, funny, great with kids…on the surface, he’s the ideal guest.
But just like Greece, which hides a turbulent history beneath that stunning surface, Adam is not entirely what he seems.
Odd things begin happening around the villa. Jamie’s passport disappears. The maid comes down with a sudden illness. Pets are mysteriously poisoned. At the center of it all is Adam, who despite playing the stranger, is intimately familiar with the skeletons in Jamie’s closet.
See, Jamie’s success did not come without cost. His road to that perfect life left a bit of collateral damage behind—and Adam, a survivor of that damage, has returned to make sure the bill is paid.
For all its many flaws (don’t worry, we’ll get to those), one virtue this psychological thriller can claim is honesty. Malice is, at its core, unapologetically malicious.
You’d be hard pressed to find a character here with a moral backbone. Jamie is your stereotypical millionaire businessman: He’s rude, selfish, arrogant, and even borders on cruel towards his children. Nat and Jules ogle younger men behind their husbands’ backs (though those husbands aren’t entirely faithful themselves). Even the teenage kids treat their parents with outrageous disrespect.
And then, of course, there’s Adam. The longer he spends with the Tanners, the more unstable he’s revealed to be. He makes disturbing comments toward the house staff, brings Jamie to a strip club and pressures him into getting drunk, and he even poisons the family’s pets (cat-and-dog lovers beware, animal cruelty is a recurring theme). It doesn’t take a genius to predict that Adam’s schemes will resort to much bloodier violence—and Malice is not likely to hold anything back.
Sexual content and nudity are also staples of this series, along with near constant foul language. While it may boast an intriguing premise, that’s about the full extent of what this over-the-top thriller can boast. The real malice here isn’t what Adam feels towards the Tanner family — it’s what Malice shows towards its viewers.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Millionaire Jamie Tanner’s luxury family vacation is disrupted by the arrival of Adam, a tutor with devious ulterior motives.
Sexual content is pervasive throughout the episode, ranging from suggestive dialogue to graphic nudity. Jamie and his wife Nat discuss when they can have sex, which transitions to an explicit scene that features male rear nudity. Adam takes Jamie to a bar with scantily clad pole dancers, one of whom is topless. Jamie says that “oral sex isn’t cheating.” Adam tells Jamie, Nat, Jules and Damien about the Greek myth of Zeus seducing and assaulting the goddess Nemesis, and Jamie shares a joke about a time when he was the only heterosexual on a boat in Cannes. Lingerie is seen hanging on a clothesline, and teenage girls wear revealing bikinis. Jamie tells his young son, Dexter, to “grow a pair.”
Adam buys freshly caught octopi from a local fisherman and slams them repeatedly against a boat to soften the meat; Dexter watches and is visibly disturbed. Later, while hanging the octopi to dry, Adam tells a maid “I’d like to gut you and hang you on a line.” Dexter jumps from a low cliff to play with his siblings in the ocean and hits his head on a rock. This isn’t graphically shown, and Dexter is only mildly injured.
Characters drink champagne, beer and cocktails throughout the episode. Jamie’s teenage son, Kit, sneaks a beer from Adam despite his mother’s protests. Adam pressures Jamie into drinking heavily until he passes out. Jamie smokes a cigarette.
The f-word is used 12 times, while the s-word is used six times. God’s name is taken in vain three times. References to male and female genitalia are made as insults, once each.
Lauren Cook is serving as a 2021 summer intern for the Parenting and Youth department at Focus on the Family. She is studying film and screenwriting at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. You can get her talking for hours about anything from Star Wars to her family to how Inception was the best movie of the 2010s. But more than anything, she’s passionate about showing how every form of art in some way reflects the Gospel. Coffee is a close second.
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