The story takes place in the aptly titled town of Hemlock Grove, a mysterious town mixed with the very rich and extremely poor. Due to the town's steel mill closing down years prior, the main sources of employment are now the Godfrey Institute for Biomedical Technologies and Hemlock Hospital. Heading the Institute, which is rumored to conduct sinister experiments on a consistent basis, is Olivia Godfrey (Famke Janssen), a master manipulator whom holds a dark secret and rules the town with an iron fist. While Hemlock Acres' lead psychiatrist is Olivia's dead husband's brother, Dr. Norman Godfrey (Dougray Scott), whom she's having an affair with.

The series starts off with introducing us to a high school teenager named Brooke (Lorenza Izzo.) On her way to meet up with her teacher for a tryst, she's suddenly attacked and is swiftly murdered.

Young gypsy Peter Rumancek (Landon Liboiron) and his mother Lynda (Lili Taylor) move to Hemlock Grove to take up residence in their late cousin's caravan. Peter immediately attracts the attention of high school freshman and aspiring novelist, Christina Wendell (Freya Tingley), who suspects the new arrival might be a werewolf. Word quickly spreads around town about Brooke's death and eyes fall on Peter due to the rumor.

Enter Roman Godfrey (Bill Skarsgard, the little brother of True Blood's fan favorite, Alexander Skarsgard.) Roman is a spoiled rich kid who lives with his manipulative mother, Olivia, and his sister, Shelley, whom is extremely large, deformed, and frankenstein-esque. Roman quickly decides to launch his own investigation into the disappearance of the girl because of secrets of his own. Due to this, Peter (who is looking to clear his name) and Roman strike up a somewhat unlikely friendship in their journey to track down the "Vergulf", the name for a werewolf gone rabidly insane, together. It's a simple murder mystery where the plot doesn't get harder to comprehend than that. It's quite stalling in some places, especially the middle episodes of the season where it takes a back seat to various subplots, but worst of all, it's entirely too predictable, as I guessed the killer, accurately, a few episodes in. A show should at least be smart enough to keep it's viewers guessing.

Rounding out our cast of characters and those who form our subplots of the first season are Norman's daughter and Roman's cousin, Letha Godfrey (Penelope Mitchell) who claims the father of her unborn child is an angel from Heaven (I.E. Immaculate conception), Christina Wendall (Freya Tingley), a lonely girl who becomes interested in Peter, although doesn't have much to do with the plot after a few episodes, but sticks around anyway. Tom Sworn (Aaron Douglas), the town's sheriff. Dr. Clementine Chasseur (Kandyse McClure), a mysterious woman who arrives in Hemlock Grove to investigate the killings along with her brother, Michael Chasseur (Demore Barnes.)

The worst point of these first 13 episodes is easily the middle portion, where the main plot of the season is completely nonexistent and the subplots take over. The show gets too hokey at times, but Hemlock Grove seems to embrace that for some reason (the dream episode for instance), when that happens, the writers fall back on gore to keep you entertained, which I feel is a mistake. The acting is quite good for the most part and the production values are solid, outside of that, I can't think of many more positive things I can say about this overly convoluted mess of a show.

- Positives:

While I disliked most of this show, there were two things I have to respect. + The cast. For such a rubbish series, this show brought on a superb cast that did the absolute best they could with the material. Headed by the gorgeous and ageless Famke Janssen, whom is clearly having a blast hamming it up with her obnoxious/amazing unexplained British accent (seriously! WHY!?) She has great chemistry with Dougray Scott. However, it's Skarsgard and Liboiron that are particularly exceptional together.

+ The production values.

- Negatives:

- The pacing is all over the map. - The characters fall right into stereotypes and never really develop. Roman is the popular badass, Olivia is the seductive manipulator, Peter is a "bad boy" whom is typically ridiculed for being a Romani, or more commonly referred to as a Gypsy. Nothing changes.

- Relies too much on gore when the series is lacking in story, and that's rather pathetic.

- Letha's "immaculate conception" and that entire storyline.

- Way too many flashbacks, especially in the final episodes where they're cramming them down our throats.

Video and Audio:
The complete first season of Hemlock Grove is presented in its Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1 with a 1080p resolution. The visuals are really stunning, especially in the transformation sequences.

The audio track for the first season is a dts HD Master 5.1.

Extras: - Special commentary with Eli Roth, the executive producer of the series, and Lorenza Izzo, whom plays Brooke in the show. Wait... who? Oh! That's right... The girl who is killed off in the first 5 and a half minutes of the pilot episode. Why not get one of the actual stars of the show?

- 7 short featurettes that details the behind the scenes process of various elemnts of the series such as the transformations, the initial kill that kicked off the series, and the development of the show.

- Trailers.

Overall:
Hemlock Grove could have been good. Sadly the series doesn't really know what it wants to be. The show suffers most from weak script writing. The direction of the series is all over the map, it has ridiculous subplots, and not a whole lot of resolution. Pretty much the only thing Hemlock Grove has going for it is its cast and their aesthetically pleasing production values, which is not enough to recommend this show. I might get flak for the following statement, but there's much better television out there for you to invest your time in. Skip it.