In Jeff Lemire’s post-apocalyptic comic Sweet Tooth, a pandemic kills off adults and causes new children to be born with animal features. In an era obsessed with stories about generational change, Netflix’s adaptation of the comic takes up the theme and ends up feeling like The Mandalorian mixed The Witcher, with elements from Mad Max: Fury Road.
Sweet Tooth. Co-created by Jim Mickle (
Legends Of Tomorrow,
Arrow), it’s a post-apocalyptic fairy tale, based on the Jeff Lemire DC/Vertigo comic book series that debuted in 2009, that combines some of Mickle’s harder horror edges with moments of Spielbergian-style charm and wonder. The result plays in a familiar dystopian sandpit (well, forest), but does a nifty job of satisfying both child-like and grown-up instincts. The backstory to the world is economically sketched in a
Raising Arizona-y prologue. A virus The Great Crumble has swept the world, alongside the unexplained emergence of hybrids born part human, part animal. Whether the hybrids caused the virus or vice versa is “one of the great mysteries of the 20th century”, so humans, driven by fear, start hunting them down. Living in the woods, Gus (Christian Convery), aka Sweet Tooth, a ten-year-old half boy-half deer who, unusually for a hybrid, has the capacity to talk (which is handy for exposition) picks