My Sad Dead Review
Director: Pablo Larraín
Date Created: 2026-09-24 20:46
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My Sad Dead Review: Directed by Pablo Larraín and based on the work of Argentine writer Mariana Enríquez, Netflix’s Spanish-language psychological horror miniseries Mis muertos tristes stars Mercedes Morán as Ema, Dolores Fonzi as Carolina, Alejandra Flechner as Lidia and Carolina Sánchez Álvarez as Julie, alongside Luz Jiménez, Carlos Portaluppi, Germán De Silva and others. The series consists of four episodes, each running for around 55 minutes.
My Sad Dead Review
Netflix series My Sad Dead revolves around Ema, a recently retired doctor, who has always seen dead people throughout her life. However, the situation becomes worse when her mother dies, since the spirit of her mother continues to be part of her day-to-day life. Unlike other cases where a person loses someone in their life and there is a clean break between them, Ema continues to see and communicate with her. The complexity is compounded by the arrival of her family with her niece, Julie, who comes back to Buenos Aires and finally ends up in a mental institution.
The reason why things become difficult for her family is the fact that her niece, Julie, sees dead people as well, but differently from Ema. In Netflix’s My Sad Dead, Ema’s gift was never presented as an ability in the same way as superpowers. Nothing is exciting about entering a room and finding a ghost that is not supposed to be there. The thing is rather exhausting. Ema has been dealing with ghosts for a long time, and after her mother dies, her gift becomes even more complex emotionally. How can you mourn someone if you see them sitting right in front of you in the house?
Mercedes Morán is especially great due to the fact that Ema is not portrayed as a classic hero of horror. She seems tired, distant, and at times indifferent to all the events that are taking place around her. This is quite normal since she is well aware of how much time she has been dealing with death. Not even the horror of the happenings around the Piedrabuena district could trigger the reaction expected from any other protagonist.
That all changes with the arrival of Julie in the story. Carolina Sánchez Álvarez endows Julie with a wholly different attitude compared to Ema. While Ema has come to accept the ghosts around her, Julie seems much more involved with them. Her family tries to explain away her behaviour using the excuse of insanity and practicality, bringing her in for treatment in a psychiatric ward, but Ema sees what the rest are missing. It was their relationship that made up some of my favourite parts of the show, providing a human element to the story of the supernatural.
The gradual expansion of the supernatural concept in the Netflix My Sad Dead series is another factor I enjoyed. In the beginning, the presence of the ghosts appears to be very personal and related to Ema and especially to her relationship with her mom. Later on, the existence of the dead seems much broader and more associated with the violence, death and pain in the neighbourhood. The ghosts stop being a symbol of fear; instead, they represent certain circumstances that people would prefer to forget about.
This is what makes the 2026 series My Sad Dead much more intriguing for me than a traditional supernatural thriller. Being afraid of the dead does not necessarily come from the need to harm somebody. The reason why their presence scares us is the unresolved stories behind them. Throughout the entire series, there is a constant link between death and everything left after a man dies. In that way, the ghosts become some kind of physical proof of our failure.
But then again, such an unconventional technique leads to the most problematic part of the series for me – the pacing. Spanish series My Sad Dead goes slowly, sometimes too slowly, and the viewer might find themselves bored if they hoped for continuous revelations and shocks of horror. There are almost no jump scares, and the series is more concerned about causing uneasiness rather than any adrenaline.
There are some other unusual decisions that do not always combine well with the emotional aspect of the series. Julie’s attitude towards the dead takes the show into the realm of weirdness, and although I am grateful that Laarain does not try to make things easy on us, sometimes it is just too weird.
Nevertheless, I think it is precisely this peculiarity that makes My Sad Dead so memorable. The show does not come across as another Netflix horror show built on the basis of some ordinary supernatural mystery. In fact, the show’s concept is more tragic, as people sometimes do not leave because of their own inability to let them go.
By the moment when the plot delves into the relationship between Ema and Julie and the effects that their relationship with the dead leaves upon them, all the supernatural aspects of the story start to appear as an extension of their emotions and not horror techniques. Particularly, I enjoyed how the relationship between Ema and her mother is not presented as just a ghost story; there is love, pain, bitterness, and an inability to say goodbye in it.
Netflix My Sad Dead Review: Summing Up
Overall, 2026 My Sad Dead series turned out to be an interesting and unique horror miniseries. It is far from perfect, especially at times when its slow rhythm and weird elements start trying my patience, but the characters and overall concept were engaging enough for me. Mercedes Morán gives a rather reserved performance as Ema, which suits the sad atmosphere of the series perfectly, while Carolina Sánchez Álvarez makes it hard for you to look away from Julie’s growing problem. The series works for me since ghosts are not the key element here, they are just the baggage of the characters.
