Nicole Kidman is having a wonderful phase in her career, since she’s in many of the miniseries recently released. From Big Little Lies to The Undoing (HBO), to Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu), she’s been playing all sorts of different characters on the small screen.

In Nine Perfect Strangers, however, she plays one of her creepiest, mysterious, and questionable character so far. She is Masha, the director of a boutique health-and-wellness resort that promises healing and transformation called Tranquillum House. She will guide a group of nine people who will enjoy, or at least they think they will, a 10-day treatment at that resort.

Based on the novel by Liane Moriarty (Big Little Lies), the six episodes (out of eight) made available for review show us that Hulu’s adaptation takes the story a little further and makes the characters more on edge than in the book.

However, the show never really fulfills its potential, stretching the plot unnecessarily. It is also bad timing that The White Lotus will have just finished airing on HBO by the time Strangers premieres. Both shows want to convey a peaceful retreat that goes wrong, but The White Lotus does it in a much more interesting and intriguing way.

There are, of course, good things in Strangers, thanks mainly to its talented cast playing the nine guests: Melissa McCarthy, Bobby Cannavale, Luke Evans, Michael Shannon, Asher Keddie, Grace Van Patten, Regina Hall, Melvin Gregg, and Samara Weaving. Not all performances are in sync, with some of them having a more theatrical approach than needed for a TV show. It also doesn’t help that the script seems to be going in all different directions, without knowing if it wants to be a mystery, a drama, or a comedy.

Nicole Kidman, with a very strong Russian accent and an eerie look, with long hair and white clothes, is the one who stands out and seems to be giving more to her role than the others.

With two episodes left, Nine Perfect Strangers falls short of its source material and misses the opportunity to do something more meaningful with such a good cast.