Whittock feels like somewhere where dark mysteries would live, buried in its dense forests and obscured by ash-gray fog. The fictional British Columbia setting of the new Crave series “Yaga,” premiering this week on AMC+, is the type of place that makes you believe in those very old stories of witches and sacrifices and deals with the devil. Unfortunately, it’s also the strongest ingredient in “Yaga,” an otherwise poorly mixed brew of sex, horror and mystery that’s not particularly sexy, scary or mysterious.

It’s a shame, too, because all the pieces for something worthwhile are here. Adapting Kat Sandler’s 2019 play of the same name (Sandler is also the show’s writer, showrunner and executive producer), the story is a reimagining of the legend of Baba Yaga, a complicated, intriguing character in Slavic folklore who sometimes helps the hero — and sometimes eats children. A voice-over at the beginning and end of each of the first seven episodes (the eighth and final one wasn’t available for review) slowly delivers a morbidly engrossing fairy tale that hints at what’s to come. And Jaryl Lim’s cinematography and Trevor Belcourt’s production design are hauntingly sublime, evoking ever more dread and danger as the story unfolds.

But then the series starts to feel like it skipped part of its recipe. Its horror elements are generally lackluster, though a few rise to the occasion. (Watching a flood of insects pour out from someone’s gaping mouth is always going to be nightmare fuel.) Its central mysteries — about a missing person and whether there’s an actual witch in Whittock — are obviously connected but often feel at odds narratively. And the sex, though serving a point thematically, is surprisingly listless.

It doesn’t help that the actors, though all game individually, lack any real chemistry together — with the exception of Carrie-Anne Moss, who has chemistry with everyone. Noah Reid’s private investigator Rapp and Clark Backo’s local detective Carson couldn’t be more different: Rapp all grating smirks and innuendo, Carson predictably no-nonsense and direct in response. They’re tasked to work together to find the missing rich party boy Henry (Hudson Williams, who also plays Henry's look-alike roommate Logan in a dual role), but their scenes apart are vastly superior to the ones they share.

Moss, on the other hand, is an absolute delight as a university professor with an incredibly unhealthy obsession with bones and a justified fascination with stories of mistreated women — including one particular forest witch. Far more than Rapp or Carson, her Katherine feels integral to “Yaga” and all of its mysteries. When she’s onscreen, steely eyed and brilliantly scathing, it’s hard to look away. But then we get back to the procedural elements of the missing-person case, and the magic starts to fade.

And that’s where “Yaga” struggles most: The magic isn’t in the missing-person case, which feels more irrelevant with each passing episode. It’s in the Baba Yaga of it all, of women reclaiming their stories, others’ morality be damned. The legends say she’s a scary, bone-grinding forest witch or a kindly woman who helps the hero in need, but what if she’s both? What if she’s so much more?

Maybe the final episode will help answer that question. Here’s hoping so, because otherwise we’re left with a mystery much harder to solve: why a show with so many of the right ingredients feels like a spell gone wrong.

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'YAGA'

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: AMC+

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