Meet the Lions, a badly behaved group of Catholic schoolgirls known for praying hard and sinning even harder. 

In a new trailer for The Body — which you can watch above — the teens juggle their usual litany of Catholic high school activities: attending mass, practicing routines with their dance troupe … and potentially summoning the devil into their small town. 

The coming-of-age drama, out on Netflix Nov. 11, features a dance-team initiation gone very wrong. Led by team captains Anya (Kristina Bogic) and Elise (Sara Boustany), the Lions perform a drug-fueled ritual on Grace (Sofia Wylie), their latest recruit. “Prince of Darkness, take this most holy virgin sacrifice, and in exchange let us place at regionals!” Elise declares as the girls encircle their newest member. What follows is pure chaos. Something highly suspicious is going on with Grace, terrifyingly strange ripple effects are felt throughout the school, and the Lions realize they have a major secret to bury. 

“The whole town starts asking the same question,” the logline teases. “What happened to Grace?”

Created by Quinn Shephard, writer-director of the Emmy-nominated mystery Under the Bridge, the eight-episode series stars Bogic, Boustany, Wylie, Geena Meszaros, Shirley Chen, and The Traitors winner Gabby Windey. Amy Israel, Peter Chernin, and Josh Stern executive produce for North Road, alongside Riley Keough, Gina Gammell, and Sacha Ben Harroche for Felix Culpa.

“With all the girls, I think there was something immediately special about them from their first audition tapes,” Shephard tells Tudum. “We were so blessed with the most wonderful cast. I love them, I feel like they’re all my children, my coven.”

She adds, “This was Kristina’s first time doing an American accent, and she had such an unbelievable transformation, even just in the prep for this, doing her hair, learning her accent. It was really amazing to get to see all the girls blossom and really come into their characters.”

The Body is a “playful spin” on Shephard’s own nightmarish experiences as a teenager. “I literally made this for my teen self,” she says. “Tonally, I would describe the show as gritty camp. It’s a raunchy teen psychodrama with a dash of Catholic horror.” 

Inspiration was pulled from some of the writer’s favorite ’90s and Y2K teen movies and erotic thrillers growing up, including Carrie, Jennifer’s Body, Heavenly Creatures, and Mean Girls. She also paid homage to the “massive hyperfixation” she had with The Crucible, the 1953 play by Arthur Miller.

“This show can be really funny, and it can still be really sad at times or really spooky,” Shephard notes. “It is aesthetically such an homage to every single film that influenced me as a filmmaker and made me want to be an artist.”

With The Body, Shephard is debuting her “most personal” story yet. “I joke that this show is so me — it’s really aggressively me,” she says. “It’s satirizing some of the trauma of growing up queer and repressed and the confusion around that.” 

Shephard recommends viewers throw a slumber party for their viewing experience, in classic high school fashion. “I hope people eat popcorn while they watch this, even when The Body hits hard,” she says. “Maybe light some candles.” 

The Body premieres Nov. 11. Watch the trailer above.