Cassandra is a science fiction technohorror production from German director and writer Benjamin Gutsche. The 6-episode show stars Lavinia Wilson as Cassandra, the motherly AI personality of an early smart home built in the 1970s. The series was originally released on February 6, 2025 in German, but of course, it comes with options for English subtitles and dubbing on Netflix.
Lavinia Wilson leads Cassandra with a sweet family story
As you can predict, the story begins with a family that moves into a smart home controlled by a psycho robot named Cassandra. The robot isn’t directly violent, just creepy and manipulative, yet that’s enough to tear the family apart. The sweet family story mixes with technohorror for a potent combination of genres that spills over into an unpredictable twisty-turny thriller. Meanwhile, we also see flashbacks to the 1960s-1970s past. These scenes reveal the original family who lived there, and the shocking events that led to the creation of the Cassandra robot.
While this is obviously labeled as horror, the first half is relatively mild. In fact, the strongest story element of the early episodes is a teen coming-out story, which attests to the powerful blend of genres Gutsche incorporates into the series. However, the tone of the series changes drastically as events unfold in later on.
The uncanny valley of Cassandra’s robot face is wonderfully creepy. Even though she’s acting through a glitchy TV effects, Lavinia Wilson delivers a great performance as a sinisterly saccharine robo-mom. She’s jealous of the family’s human mother and wants to remove her at any cost. It’s an easy role to fall into camp, but Wilson keeps her take grounded in reality, which makes Cassandra all the more unsettling.
The strong acting is aided by Gutsche’s team behind the camera. I particularly loved Frank Bollinger’s work in the production design of the house. For a show mostly in one location, set design had to be crucially important. Bollinger’s choice of pastel colors and rounded shapes in the retro practical aesthetic reminded me warmly of Kasra Farahani’s excellent work on Loki as well.
The soundscape is good, both in Mathieu Lamboley’s score and Gutsche‘s soundtrack choices, as well as Sylvain Remy’s eerie sound design. J. Moritz Kaethner’s cinematography is simple but elegant, making nice use of blue shadows and well-placed vintage warm lights.
Netflix’s Cassandra becomes brutally dark
The second half of the show completely blows up the drama into the most brutal story imaginable. The series gets progressively darker, evolving from psychological technohorror to cancer, suicide, shootings, toxic parents, birth complications, child torture, murder, surveillance paranoia, hostage situations, and manipulative gaslighting. As the show goes on, Cassandra turns extremely dark and disturbing, yet remains addictively adrenaline-pumping.
Director Benjamin Gutsche knows how to design disturbing twists. Cassandra excels at shocking episode cliffhangers that make it impossible not to keep watching to see how the terrifying situations resolve. Unfortunately, this strength leads to another weakness: Most of the cliffhangers don’t mean anything. They’re cheap teases to pull viewers from episode to episode, and usually their resolutions are upsettingly unsatisfying.
In fact, the writing is the weakest element of the show across the board. Although there are parts of the script that I liked, the frustratingly flat family drama severely held back my enjoyment. The first few episodes could have been condensed into one part. And while the flashbacks could have been an exciting story opportunity for Gutsche’s writing, double the family drama only meant double the pain, and I struggled in the early episodes. I found some of the nonlinear chronology confusing as well.
As the show develops, the flashbacks become more essential as the two timelines become closely intertwined. Thankfully, this makes the latter half of the season much more interesting, and I can encouragingly recommend episodes 4-6. Before episode 4, the most horrific part of the show is the robot Cassandra as a toxic housewife, but that certainly changes as the series progresses. The softer first half lulls you into a false sense of safety before the sudden deluge of darkness at the end of the season, creating an unbelievable sense of tonal whiplash. I enjoyed the ending, but the road to get there could have been smoother.
The slower family drama would have been fine if there was something deeper there, but the characters remain two-dimensional across the series. The actors do their best to elevate the material, but the characters are dumb and empty. Considering the full 6-episode runtime, there was room for more intelligent conflict and nuanced emotional arcs. This kind of underdeveloped writing could pass in a short movie, but the seams start to show in the longer format.
Final thoughts on Cassandra
Overall, Cassandra is enjoyable, though not quite exceptional. I had a blast being repulsed, horrified, and delighted in the last half of the season, and I think this would have excelled as an easily bingeable 4 episodes or a tight two-hour movie. While the cliffhangers are unhinged and unpredictable, their emptiness embodies the problem in the Benjamin Gutsche’s writing. Nonetheless, I’m sure Cassandra will get a season 2, and to be honest, I can’t wait to see what kind of horrible extravaganza Gutsche cooks up next.
All 6 episodes of Cassandra are streaming now on Netflix. What did you think of the show? Let me know on Bluesky @vinwriteswords and remember to follow the site @TheCosmicCircus.com or @MyCosmicCircus for more killer coverage coming soon!
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