Thirteen Reasons Why Review | Film & TV

A few years ago, I read and reviewed, Jay Asher’s YA novel Thirteen Reasons Why and loved it. So, when the news came out that Netflix had got the rights to produce a 13-part series based on the book, I was beyond excited. For those of you who don’t know the story, which is pretty unlikely as it has been one of the most talked about Netflix originals in history, the story follows awkward teen Clay Jensen as he comes to terms with the shocking suicide of his close friend, Hannah Baker. Returning home from school one day, Clay finds a box addressed to him filled with 7 cassette tapes recorded by the recently deceased Hannah Baker. Going through the tapes one by one, Clay discovers the thirteen reasons why Hannah killed herself and uncovers many hidden secrets of his senior class along the way.

 So, I am always sceptical when starting an overly hyped series, as usually, they don’t live up to the hype. Whilst there were aspects of the series which I really disliked, overall the series did live up to the book. Firstly, each of the characters was really well cast. Each of the actors lived up to the personas that Asher had originally created, especially in regard to Alex (played by Miles Heizer) and Clay (played by Dylan Minnette). I also loved the incorporation of the struggles of Hannah’s parents. I think this was something that was missing in the actual book – we didn’t truly see the effects of Hannah’s suicide through the eyes of anyone but Clay. The cinematography as well was beautiful. The choice of using different colour filters for before and after Hannah’s suicide not only made it easy to distinguish between the two different time periods but also gave the overall show a really artistic finish.

However, there were aspects of the series that I didn’t really enjoy. I felt that, at times, the story had been dragged out a little bit too much – making it quite tedious whenever Clay was interrupted or just stop listening to the individual tapes. Whilst I feel like lots of the book would have been lost in a film format, the notion of having an episode dedicated to each tape made parts seem quite superfluous. Another aspect that I felt was a little unnecessary was the inclusion of very graphic and long rape scenes. Whilst it is clear that the message of these was to highlight the true brutality of the acts, for me, these scenes were uncalled for. The effects of the rape could clearly be seen in the reactions of both the victims and the other classmates - I personally found the scene following Hannah's rape the most effective just because of the raw emotion that Katherine Langford (the actress who brought the character to life) exhibited. 

Overall, the series whilst having some faults, dealt with a sensitive issue extremely successfully without being too overt. The actors were well chosen and suited their characters perfectly, and even managed to develop a few somewhat minor characters from the book, i.e. Hannah’s parents. It is unusual for a TV/film adaptation to live up to its original book but Thirteen Reasons Why has clearly been successfully adapted from its original.