Alarming as elves are when perched atop shelves, Netflix’s upcoming series Elves — created by Stefan Jaworski and directed by Roni Ezra — imagines a world where the (at-times) minuscule creatures exist as a dark, mysterious secret lurking in the forests of Denmark where a family just so happens to be travelling during the holiday season.
It’s perhaps because the family at the centre of Elves is in the throes of a holiday vacation that most of them pay no real mind when their car seems to hit… something they don’t understand while en route to their destination. The first trailer details how, even though the family’s car is smeared with blood after their accident, only the youngest daughter thinks to go back and check to see what the would-be roadkill might have been. What the girl finds when she wanders back to the scene of the accident is far from dead, and even farther from human — but because it’s small and sort of helpless, she takes a liking to it, figuring that they might become friends. Naturally, though, the baby elf she finds is merely an infant, and much, much less dangerous than the mature creatures that eventually come looking for their progeny.
Elves’ trailer implies that while the elves themselves will be one of the movie’s menaces, the small Danish village the family encounters is almost sure to have something to do with why the creatures have taken to attacking people. It’s difficult to tell from the trailer who’s really being wronged here, but it feels quite possible that the elves will end up being revealed as at least a bit more sympathetic than they’re initially presented.
Elves cast includes Sonja Steen, Milo Toke Bendix Campanale, Ann Eleonora Jørgensen, Vivelill Søgaard Holm, Rasmus Hammerich, Peder Thomas Pedersen, Lila Nobe,l and Lukas Løkken. The series hits Netflix on November 28.