The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix (Spoilers)

for all your thoughts on the bent-neck lady, that ending, and why they definitely shouldn't do a second season

I just finished the first 2 episodes. Annabeth Gish! (this is really my only thought so far).

i finishedthe whole thing last night & found the final episode a bit naff. first 2/3 of the final ep was ok, corny but i sort of liked everyone getting a moment; but the final third just went on and on and onnnn and the narration drove me up the wall

It also leaned heavily on Huisman who is so clearly the cast's weak link

It would have been SO satisfying, maybe even brilliant, for them to show us this elaborate happy ending, then show us that this was merely another level of manipulation the house was capable of - it even suggests it with Hutton's suicide. But it's hard to read the happy ending as anything but sincere thanks to the way it's scored and edited. Very frustrating.

That said, the middle stretch of this (around 4-6, maybe including 3) is maybe the best set of episodes of any Netflix original to date.

My wife summed it up perfectly in the closing seconds of the final episode
“So... Hill House is good.”

Enough fantastic stuff throughout that I’m gonna just forget about the finale. “Two Storms” totally incredible.

As hokey as Flanagan can be at times, his ability to construct horror narratives around characters you actually give a shit about is so refreshing

It also leaned heavily on Huisman who is so clearly the cast's weak link

omg yes, he's the worst. and Steve was the least sympathetic one out of that whole broken family.

Not enough Carla Gugino imo.

i can only assume people keep casting Huisman in things but he just naturally comes across as a smarmy prick

something about his whispery speaking voice really bugged me too, too much of an obvious affectation where the rest of the adult cast's delivery feels totally natural

agree on the ending. Thought it was way too saccharine (and the inversion of Jackson's words at the end was nauseating). Flanagan definitely has that tendency though c.f. the recently resurrected Before I Wake

That said, most of the first half was great and episodes 5 & 6 are definitely peak 2019 TV

or 2018 even...

time out of joint

He can also pull off sickeningly downbeat endings too, as in his first few movies.

Huisman def weakest, I havent liked him in anything since he was in Nashville.

As much as I didnt love the final ep, what I did love was Hutton getting some v good camera time. I have always been a fan. Gugino too, she was stellar. Kind of wish they had given Annabeth Gish more to do throughout the series as well.

I thought the two kids that played Nell & Steve were so good. And frowny remote young Theo reminded me so much of myself at that age (right down to the Paula Abdul choreo).

I actually had to google to see if young Theo was related to Keirnan Shipka (she's not)

yeah young Theo was great. even though they were too close in age, I really liked Henry Thomas and Tim Hutton as a pair.

Between this and American crime story or whatever it was called, I have been mega enjoying all these damaged and greasy old Timothy Huttons

The ending is terrible - the house is meant to be a deranged, corrupting force on people, and those that end up there are lost, tortured beings. it's not an afterlife day care. All of a sudden the threat of the house is handwaved away, as if it is 'what dreams may come' or some such. It just didn't make any sense - I still thought it was a great show, though.

I want those 10 (?) hours back.

The scares were fun and great to see Hutton, Thomas and Gugino get relatively good roles to work with. The woman who played Nell was terrific but the little girl who played her was just bad. And I really could care less about the elder kids as damaged adults because, with the exception of Nell and Theo, they were plain unlikeable. It was a bit of a struggle but I hung out for the big payoff that just never happened. Once burned...

I found all the adults pretty sympathetic. Except for fuckin' Steven. I think he could have worked with a different actor, and if they'd done more with the family's financial stresses and made clearer that book revenues were keeping them afloat. (Finances were definitely a throughline, but I think they could have done more to implicate them all in monetizing their suffering rather than just having Steven be the asshole.)

dowd otm about the ending & “afterlife daycare”

also the red room pay-off felt halfbaked. ok so it morphed depending on who was in it. cool. but then what? what does it mean, exactly? idk

Now I am wondering if I should commit any more hours to this.

it’s still worth it imo

Yep.

(unless you're one of those "an iffy ending undoes any good that came before" types, which, idk how ppl like that ever enjoy horror)

lol otm

lol IF this had been horror. Instead, it felt like a sum total of 20 minutes of spooky stuff sprinkled throughout a bunch of endless sibling bickering

mr veg called it “the screaming & crying show”

As I said on the main TV thread, it's absolutely a melodrama with horror elements rather than the other way around. I will say a LOT of people (on social media etc.) do seem to find it v spooky, but movies stopped scaring me a long time ago so I'm not a great barometer for these things

it made me jump quite a few times & i found it mildly scary in places. no more or less scary than the Conjuring imo

To talk about stuff besides the ending: I feel like a big part of the Netflix model is making sure that there's a centerpiece sequence people talk about - Daredevil with its long-take fight scenes, for instance. But the end of "Bent-Neck Lady" and the long takes in "Two Storms" were genuinely impressive and even emotive in a way Netflix shit almost never is.

just starting episode 2 and jesus stop trying to force the kid to see his dead grandma!

The family seems to have a deep commitment to the idea that people should see the dead bodies of their loved ones...

If I had a family member that was an embalmer, I would explicitly make it clear than I would not want them performing that task on me.

It's odd because it's kind of treated like it's some universal part of grief. Ah well, WASPs gonna WASP, I guess.

i have never been to an open casket funeral - really dont want to ever have to go to one imo

No, me either.

so the Dudleys' second kid, Abigail, she WAS real, right? I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that Luke kept saying he had an imaginary friend who was a little girl and nobody put two and two together that it was the Dudleys' kid. I guess maybe the Crains didn't know the Dudleys even had a kid until the scene when Mrs. Dudley talked to Mrs. Crain about it, but considering Mrs. Dudley was always around during the day and Luke was always yapping about this imaginary friend, you think at least she would have put it together.

fwiw I liked the ending, even if it was indeed rather touchy-feely "Lost"-esque. so much horror nowadays resolves with EVERYONE dying brutally and meaninglessly that I was expecting the show to go that route.

I don't think Luke ever called her imaginary, it was just their assumption. I have to say that was a nice little twist (brutal to watch a kid merrily gulp poison, though)

yeah, I was imprecise there, what I meant was that everyone assumed she was imaginary.

Yep, they were all aware that there was a young girl that actually lived on the property and they never thought for a second Luke's friend might be real

It was both dumb and an incredibly obvious twist

another thing that irked me was Shirley's one-night stand, the way it was just sort of tossed in at the 11th hour as a way to explain her being an asshole and more importantly to give her a reason to need redemption.

yeah, that dude literally materialised out of nowhere

yeah i think it could have been integrated better

I'm not going to read this whole thread since I'm only three episodes in but I think the casting in this is superb. They did an amazing job of not only finding people who actually look related to each other (at least the women) but also casting younger people who really do look like the older actors.

It seems to not be a universal opinion (to say the least), but I thought the casting and acting was excellent.

i agree except for stupid dumb Steve

I think some of the kid acting was a little kid acting-y but that's more than forgivable; all the non-Huisman adults are great. it's kind of funny to see his previous leading ladies (Reaser, Gugino, Siegel) united as one unhappy family.

agree!

Siegel is so good. I need to see Hush and Ouija 2 now. Huge fan.

the amazing one take (if it really was) during Eulogy when she misses the arm of the couch and falls on her ass!

Her screams when she touches Nelly's body ... i rarely find anything in a horror film heartbreaking but that was.

of the Flanagan flicks I've seen, I'd rank 'em:

Absentia
Oculus
Ouija 2
Gerald's Game
Hush

Oculus was pretty decent imo. I havent seen any of the others

Oculus was great.

Way, way better than a movie about a ~spooky mirror~ has any right to be.

otm

karen gillan also. which is the only reason I watched it at first

Man I really hated oculus and would put it dead last of the Flanagans I’ve seen

Man, that ranking is so not my ranking. Hush is his best movie imo

Madness. It's fine but no better than a half dozen other home invasion flicks.

I'd say the premise and execution is a little better than that

but I guess I think all his other movies have major elements that don't work for me, and Hush just does exactly what it sets out to with maximum efficiency

Finished this last night. Last episode was a little cheesy but at least it wasn't a complete letdown the way the end of Castle Rock was. The implication at the end though that the House itself isn't evil.. I guess this is consistent? I'm trying to think back on everything that happened in the house and is it true that nothing inside the house itself ever actually hurt anyone? Aside from mom going insane...but... how much of that was delusion on her part and something that the house created?

I thought the conversation between her and the dad around how he inflicted harm on the children by taking them and then shielding them from the truth was quite moving. but again I was fucking stoned.

Kate Siegel's speech about feeling absolutely nothing was quite great also, because that could be supernatural, but it could just be an accurate depiction of how grief can settle in.

Anyway I appreciated this show. It was intelligent, legitimately spooky and disturbing without ever being gory, and the performances were all pretty great. Of course there won't be a second season. Wouldn't mind seeing them helm another series though but i see he's doing Doctor Sleep (there are several shots in this that looked to me like "this is my Shining Sequel audition shot")

all the wee secret ghosts were creeeeepy

they were! i cant remember which ep it was but when little steve opted to hide ~under~ the bed from the tall man ghost i was like in any other house maybe but there’s prob something under there too!!
turned out there wasnt but it wigged me nonetheless
(then again i still have residual under the bed fears from childhood lol)

So I just finished this and really enjoyed it, until the last 15-20 mins of the last ep at which point I was basically:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Va5_rn3vG3A/hqdefault.jpg

But I loved the creepiness of the ghosts, especially tall man (was that meant to be ol'man Hill?) with his stick and hat.

And did anything ever explain the clock repairman? Were we just meant to assume the house is populated with old ghosts who like being there? The ending jarred with the rest for me, it made little sense that this was their "home" when the last 95% of the show had depicted the place as insane and distressing and evil.

yeah totally

This was total shit.

Just finished last night. I want to start with this:

another thing that irked me was Shirley's one-night stand, the way it was just sort of tossed in at the 11th hour as a way to explain her being an asshole and more importantly to give her a reason to need redemption.

― evol j, Thursday, October 25, 2018 2:51 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that dude literally materialised out of nowhere

― Number None, Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:05 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i think it could have been integrated better

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:09 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...and say y'all are bad at paying attention because Shirley's one night stand dude popped up intermittently through the entire series.

So I'm one of those who complains about horror stuff that manages to stay good for a long while before shitting the bed in the home stretch...and I don't think that happened here. Maybe my opinion will change after some reflection, but I was actually pretty satisfied by the ending. I could write (and have written) a lot about how one of the most important functions of horror imo is as a proxy for processing trauma, and that subtext was brought very much to the fore wrt this show. The hauntings, the ghosts, were at the root the various traumas afflicting the characters. So it felt like a 'you can survive and overcome' ending felt appropriate to this particular journey.

In terms of plot mechanics, I don't really expect overt explicability from my supernatural fiction, but I feel like it was mostly consistent. The house had been painted as evil, but it was also pointed out on various occasions that there some real nutbags among the myriad of ghosts in residence, and it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to assume that the presence of a loving family of ghosts might have an effect on the psychic aura.

Absolutely everyone involved in this endeavor (save maybe Huisman) brought their A-game. I will be paying very close attention to future projects from these folks.

I gots lots to say but it's early and I have, y'know, work to do but I thought I'd just get down some first thoughts.

(I kinda feel like Huisman's primary impediment is possession of a physiognomy which doesn't transmit 'gravity' very well. Which I can sympathize with.)

Huisman is/was fine as a swinging-dick soldier on GOT, he just seemed miscast to me here.

He probably would've been fine as part of a slightly less talented cast, but everyone else in this was SO GOOD.

I don't know how I've apparently failed to see pretty much everything Carla Gugino ever did...except Son-in-Law apparently? But man. I hope her career gets a serious boost from this. All of their careers.

She was great in Gerald's Game.

I give Huisman a break because I find him ridiculously good-looking. He’s probably not as good primarily because English isn’t his first language.

The casting of the adult Luke was bad. The actor was ok but the child Luke was a very particular kind of child that wouldn’t have looked yow that adult looked.

how*

yeah casting of adult luke was hilarious.

generally in Flanagan's stuff the women get the meatier/more interesting roles and this was no different (with the exception of Hutton/Thomas)

Did they buy that house on the super-cheap or something? Seems odd that they moved into this place that was pretty immaculate as it was, were going to spend 3 months there (with 5 kids in tow) doing everything themselves and then flip it? I don't think they could have painted that place by themselves in that time, let alone whatever else it was that needed fixing. Were they counting on real-estate hysteria to drive the price up?

This is a hot mess, couldn’t make it past the first episode. Why they felt a need to mess with the perfect plot of the book I don’t know

Well, it'd be tough to get ten episodes out of it

It's not the book. If I have any one real qualm about the show, it's directed more generally toward the more tendency these days of Die Hard-ing essentially original properties into 'adaptations' that aren't actually adaptations in any meaningful sense.

more (I don't even know what that was, my keyboard must be haunted)

yeah, I agree with that.

It seems like Netflix bought the rights and then approached Flanagan to turn it into a show, but how much name value does did the book really have for the majority of their viewers? I don't see why it couldn't have been an original haunted house series and succeeded just as well.

another thing that irked me was Shirley's one-night stand, the way it was just sort of tossed in at the 11th hour as a way to explain her being an asshole and more importantly to give her a reason to need redemption.

― evol j, Thursday, October 25, 2018 2:51 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that dude literally materialised out of nowhere

― Number None, Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:05 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i think it could have been integrated better

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, October 25, 2018 3:09 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

...and say y'all are bad at paying attention because Shirley's one night stand dude popped up intermittently through the entire series.

― a butt, at which the shaft of ridicule is daily glanced (Old Lunch), Friday, November 2, 2018 8:19 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I do remember seeing him at least once, I more just meant the payoff felt tacked-on, like the show needed to give Shirley something to have to atone for and this just felt like a half-assed 11th hour choice.

Nah. Every time the dude manifested, Shirley reacted to the vision in a way that suggested she was avoiding something shameful. The intention was fairly clear throughout and the reveal was consistent with the reactions we (or at least I) had seen previously.

I mean, there are plenty of loose threads to pick at in this series but this is not one of them imo.

To be clear, though, I'm mostly just mildly teasing people about not paying attention. The entire show was so mired in dreamlike passages and time-space fuckery that it was probably very easy to overlook at least some of those elements or miss how they fit into the larger tapestry. Like every time that dude cheered Shirley with his drink, it was so brief and off-handed and unmentioned that I did almost question whether I'd missed some prior reference to this unnamed character.

here’s my burning question though
how many freaking room are in that house? it got kinda mind boggling in the storm sequence especially. it’s like the Winchester Mansion

re: the adultery bit, I agree that it felt like a weak bit of character motivation compared to the intra-family stuff, though the actual scene depicting the affair was nicely played

xpost My addendum to that question is: how literally are we meant to take the Red Room masquerading as all of those other rooms? And if the answer is 'very' then how extensively did the house/ghosts fuck with the minds of the inhabitants to prevent them from ever recognizing the room when (presumably) it was in use by another family member?

I'm find with hand-wavey, timey-wimey 'explanations' for most of this phenomena tbrr.

find = fine

Keyboard definitely haunted this morning.

how extensively did the house/ghosts fuck with the minds of the inhabitants to prevent them from ever recognizing the room when (presumably) it was in use by another family member?

The one time I took notice of this but didn't realise at the time what it meant, was when Simon finds the dresser in the games room and when he mentions it to Mrs Dudley, she looks really confused and says "...games room?". I should have paid attention to my instinct that immediately went "hey some of these rooms arent real" but then I forgot all about it haha.

Simon = Steven urgh Im senile.

So, that room was the heart of the house. And you could think of it almost like, I dunno, the lands above the Magic Faraway Tree or some shit, it didnt have to be horrifying, and wasnt for the kids.

One other bit I remain confused by. When young Nell disappears and they all look everywhere for her then eventually she "reappars" saying "I was here the whole time and I was shouting and you couldnt hear me". WTF was all that about. Where did she go?

(yeah yeah, I get the analogy of how it was her being ignored by her family so she kills herself etc but still...)

not to carp on too much about the ending, but this sums up my thoughts exactly:

The ending is terrible - the house is meant to be a deranged, corrupting force on people, and those that end up there are lost, tortured beings. it's not an afterlife day care. All of a sudden the threat of the house is handwaved away

i was fine with nell's speech, and liv and er the dad's scene, but once the dudleys showed up it was downhill all the way. "oh no our child is dead! oh she still exists as a ghost in the house, that's cool just don't burn it down, thx!" and yes who were all the the other ghosts and how did they get there? shirley jackson spinning in her grave at the last line (delivered over the worst old man hat song).

is it true that nothing inside the house itself ever actually hurt anyone?

nell was killed (not suicide!) and forced to haunt her own past, liv was driven mad (pretty clearly suggested this was the house's doing), made to kill abigail and herself; all the others were presumably due a similar fate until nell saved them. old man hill forced to entomb himself...

the end was the one sour note, otherwise it was definitely a good show. the bent-neck lady was a classic scary figure, her ultimate explanation was next level.

Flanagan thread about episode 6

I've gotten a lot of questions about ep 106 of @haunting . Netflix released an awesome little BTS video, but for those that want more information, here's a little thread: Episode 6 was part of the very first pitch for the show, promising an episode that would look like one shot.

— Mike Flanagan (@flanaganfilm) November 4, 2018

I still maintain that the house was not inherently evil but was rather a receptacle for malevolent spirits. Another reason why which occurred to me: the Dudleys only avoided the house at night rather than cutting out altogether.

The jump scare in the car in the second to last episode is one of the best I've seen in anything in a long, long time.

the thread about ep 6 is wild, thanks for that

luckily some people noticed, all that effort went right past me!

The jump scare in the car in the second to last episode is one of the best I've seen in anything in a long, long time.

that was good, also the one in an earlier episode when the dad is comforting the girls after the hammering on the walls and suddenly goes full demon.

I've heard lots of ppl say they didn't notice the long takes, which is the surest sign that they were well-conceived. Usually they're super ostentatious and make a point of calling attention to the technique.

I for sure noticed. I was increasingly impressed with Flanagan as the series progressed (having never seen any of his other stuff) but that was the point where I was like, 'this kid is going places.'

The jump scare in the car in the second to last episode is one of the best I've seen in anything in a long, long time.

― Plinka Trinka Banga Tink (Eliza D.), Monday, November 5, 2018 8:35 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My gf often yelps when we're watching scary stuff but she SCREAMED and jumped out of her seat when that happened. So yeah, very well done.

i think i did notice some tracking shots, in particular the dad walking from the funeral home to the house. assumed it was cgi obv.

(PS There is a v impressive super long take action sequence in the new season of Daredevil for those who are fans of long takes and don't hate superheroes.)

It took me a few minutes into the episode, but by the time Hugh walked from the funeral home into Hill House while looking for the bathroom I was like, "Wait, there haven't been any camera cuts yet, right?" and from there I got totally into it. Frankly this hour of TV put the whole technique to better use than Birdman.

The end was fine, good even, in terms of story but they fucked up the tone and way overexplained what you were supposed to take from it. Wasn't enough to ruin a great show by any means (though the song was cutting it close).

I thought the house was certainly trying to deliberately kill people as it wanted more ghosts, and was using the crazier ghosts to achieve that end. But it turned out being a ghost at Hill House isn't the absolute worst thing.

Way, way better than a movie about a ~spooky mirror~ has any right to be.

― wayne trotsky (Simon H.)

You're mad, spooky mirror is a great premise for a movie.

https://goo.gl/images/pYHVMC

http://notcoming.com/images/features/dead-of-night/4.jpg

If you like the last line I don’t know what to say. Perhaps there’s a bias among those of us who’ve seen earlier versions/read the book?

Yeah, but...again, this isn't the book. I mean, I get that it shares a title and trivial elements with its predecessors, but otherwise I don't know why you're comparing the two.

Even within the show - what happened to the house that changes it from 'walk alone'?

^^^

Not read thread yet but hopefully kid who plays young Luke has an exciting career behind him

I was talking about this at the pub and a friend of mine said how much she liked the ending! She didn't want the ending to be sad, apparently.

I dont mind a houseful of happy ghosts! But it just felt like such a WtF after the rest of the show?

same!

I think I actually muttered something like "what is this, the end of a Scrubs episode!?"

hee

Lol yeah that’s exactly what it feels like

This and Gerald’s game are the only Flanagan things I’ve seen and both have scenes that are so syrupy (in presentation as well as in conception) that you wonder if he’s taking the piss. It’s not just the ending here, the flashback of nell’s relationship with the sleep tech was like it too. In gg it’s just the ending, which comes from the book - I remember Flanagan saying in an interview “it’s not my job to fix Stephen King’s story” which uh check again cause I think you’ll find that is exactly your job. When I started watching this I found it pretty heartening that he had apparently changed his mind about unfaithful adaptations, as it might mean the dr sleep movie has a chance of actually being good, but based on this maybe he wouldn’t have come up with anything better for the last 15 minutes of gg

Just to add a note of dissent, I saw what they were doing early on in ep 6 and thought it was impressive overall but the tradeoff with the one-take thing is that some of the performances became a little, ahem, ropy, esp in the big funeral home argument

just finished this - everyone otm that huisman is terrible in this, compared to how great everyone else is, esp since the story sort of pivots around him.

the jump scare in the car when the sisters are on the way to the house scared the shit out of me!!! the most literal jump scare i've ever seen. would've been great in a movie theater.

one question: did anyone else notice the girl watching young hugh as he's breaking through the bricks to find the skeleton? when he's in profile, she's in the background, peering around the wall, and has long white hair. i read a vulture recap of that ep and the writer somehow noticed hugh's shadow was "off" (i didn't notice this) but didn't see the girl??

https://imgur.com/vHcUzaK

https://imgur.com/hy0QWUK

yeah there's about a million of those background ghosts

https://screenrant.com/haunting-hill-house-hidden-ghosts-secrets-background

lol i didn't notice any of those other ones

Wanted: extras to dress in black, hang around in the background of scenes, and change position between takes

This is the scariest ghost in the series imo:

http://ugc-01.cafemomstatic.com/gen/constrain/750/2000/70/2017/08/25/11/4b/q5/povqa1em4g.jpg

One thing about this is the way that even though it's not really an adaptation, just a riff on the concept/approach, it's haunted by the novel in interesting ways - so many things here come directly from the book but are used in completely different contexts: the lions, people being walled up, the cup of stars, there are tons. In the book none of those things have actual plot weight, they're things dreamed up by the dreamy protagonists, but there's a kind of thrill in seeing them crop up as tangible details (even though it's really just Easter egg literalism). And of course there are a shitload of direct quotes from the novel - this is why people are correct to complain about the last line being changed btw, it's completely absurd to say 'I don't know why you're comparing the two' when we're literally talking about several lines of text being lifted directly from the novel and being changed from something very good to something very bad

I’m kind of astonished at just how bad the final episode of this was. Just...wow. Megalodon-sized shark jumping.

I haven’t felt this much hate towards a piece of entertainment in years

Finally finished this, thank Christ. It felt interminable beyond the admittedly excellent episodes 5&6 and the ending - the smuggling in of a glowing afterlife, into something that was emphatically other - was cheap. You can almost imagine Jackson as one of the hidden ghosts, screaming silently into the blackness: no redemption! And this format does encourage idea that endless talking somehow stands for 'writing'. So much talking!

All that said the casting was good (even Huismans didn't offend me) and I thought the kids were particularly great.

Everybody has a dream. And, like Hill House, we must all follow our dream wherever it takes us.

Some unpleasant people became part of Hill House's dream. But it cannot be blamed for that. Hill House was a success, in the end, wasn't it?

I actually love the idea that the last 15 mins is told from the House's perspective, but I don't think that reading is seriously supported in any way

Another reason I think Jackson would shriek is that, after everything, it was (partly) about a classic hysteric: the devouring mother.

Loved the statue head turn during the storm episode and I was hoping for more statue backstory.

apparently season 2 is about the statue's troubled childhood

It's all one long take.

Would watch a horror film in one take like Russian Ark.

The ending was superb. It's about how keeping secrets affects the future. You can remain silent, thinking hiding sth will not affect your surrounding, but does influence your life. It was great.

Dowd did you listen the Heavyweight episode where he tracks down the violinist who looked at the camera and “ruined” the single take in RA?

No! I'll need to track it down. I certainly didn't notice it when I watched it. I lent the DVD to a friend of mine who died and I don't know how to ask for it back...

(from his widow, obv.)

Or did you mean the first take? That makes more sense, sorry.

A new Haunting is coming. Can you guess where it takes place? Listen closely... pic.twitter.com/vqzrd3z4NZ

— The Haunting of Hill House (@haunting) February 21, 2019

(it's an anthology show now)

2020! (emits eldritch howl)

that's cool. he has to finish Doctor Sleep first (and I need to finish reading it. hope the movie is more interesting than the book so far)

Anthology show probably the correct way to go.

so apparently the new one will be landing around October probably. much of the same cast, based on a bunch of different Henry James stories with a bunch of different writers and directors. could be good!

oooooh exciting

Has anyone watched “Shirley” (it’s on Hulu)?
Definitely pushes the boat out but i thought it was really good & weird & disorienting. Elizabeth Moss is fantastic.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/29/shirley-jacksons-son-talks-to-his-fictional-mom-elisabeth-moss

I watched it last night, VegemiteGrrl. A disappointment: the sort of film that encourages a culture's most predictable conclusions about the nexus between a writer and her material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxeiY2W03Mc&

Looks cornier than Hill House.

hmm

I need to make sure when I sit down to watch this that I turn my analytical brain off and embrace the cornball tbh

also I hope Victoria Pedretti's character in the new one gets to ice some fools or something, she needs payback for Hill House

I fucking love Turn Of The Screw but have no idea how they'd flesh it out into a series!

I just finished Hill House last night and the ending was the worst, the worst, the worst, all the plot threads tied up so deliciously and wonderfully but the "this evil house.. is actually a sanctuary" was awwwwful.

Plot Twist: The ending was entirely the product of Steve's corny imagination, and the gag is that he's a spectacularly shitty writer
Plot Twist: Olivia, who has always been Joanna Newsom, sings "I fell in love with a house wrapped in red roses and I roasted apples on the hearth and I had a robin" to the tune of "Monkey & Bear"
The Dudleys response to the death of their daughter was WTF
I only realized in the last episode that the dad was Elliott

apparently they've got the rights to the entire Henry James...bibliography?...so basically it'll be the Henry James Cinematic Universe....Season

Huh!

A friend has pointed out to me that the bulk of the clunky dialogue that suddenly takes over the last two episodes of Hill House was taken direct from the novel. Too bad!

This was a rare show that I avoided any possibility of any spoilering and it was worth it, though, every mystery-reveal was faultless

That's Flanagan's main flaw as a writer: he loves his source materials too much. (This is a big problem with his faithful adaptations of deeply flawed Stephen King works.)

I just hope s2 can nearly match s1 for sheer, almost irresponsible, levels of emotional terrorism

also delighted to scan the cast of the new series and see that there's no Huisman, the very obvious (and only) weak link in the cast of the first one

Oooooh casting the guy who played Luke as Peter Quint is inspired

In general I thought the MVPs on Hill House were the kids, young Steve aside (and he was good too!) they were fucking amazing.

The scene where Young Luke is saying "I'm going to be so sad that I put poison in my body" really destroyed me

I still can't get over the uncanny casting of Henry Thomas and Tim Hutton as younger/older takes on the same person

I don't remember much but I remember the last two episodes of Hill House had nothing plot-wise to do with the book. If there were lines directly lifted, I wouldn't hold a case of taking words from the page out of context and sticking them in a different medium with a different plot more or less against the source material.

No, that was exactly the case... lifted lines put into new contexts. Apparently one of the ghosts tells Old Hugh a nursery rhyme that Shirley Jackson used to tell her own kids irl

And ya Simon it was uncanny. The child/adult casting of Shirley also was craaaazy

Bly Manor's out Friday; getting mostly encouraging reviews.

also, lots more Victoria Pedretti and no Michael Huisman seems like an immediate, obvious improvement

most of the reviews seem to be saying "not as scary" which is slightly concerning given Flanagan's soppier instincts

as long as there's no tacked-on happy ending this time I would be fine with that tbh

Why is he talking about having the rights to all of James’ supernatural stories? Surely James is out of copyright??

some of M.R. James' stuff was published after he died and is thus still copyrighted

(Casting the Runes and Whistle and I'll Come For You are both public domain though!)

This is Henry James though

Kinda wish I'd known that going in. I kept being like 'this...really reminds me of The Innocents'. Lo and behold.

his name is pasted all over the credits!

Watched the first two eps - digging the super chill pacing and the mood-over-scares approach. Also lol @ the dodgy accents juxtaposed with actual English actors

ooh need to watch Bly Manor thx for reminder

Peter Quint's is quite possibly the worst fake Scottish accent I've ever heard.

Oh God, just reached his part - it's awful.

ok, 5 eps in and really digging this so far despite the hilarious accent work. really more of a gothic romance vibe than horror but that's totally fine by me.

Yeah, the noble accents of the British Isles are being mauled all over the shop in this. Four episodes in and enjoying it though, fewer obvious chills than Hill House but still engrossing and, er, haunting.

I ended up liking this less than Hill House despite the ending being less of a shitshow, but I'll hold off on saying more till other people weigh in who've watched the entirety.

i’m 4 eps in and I like it but the accents are driving me up a wall

Quint makes me want to mute the tv

Even the accents by UK actors sound a bit weird.

it's really too bad because the perf and characterization are otherwise quite effective imo

bly house lost me by the end idk, it did some things well but couldve been condensed; i havent watched hill house but i prob will eventually

the biggest problem for me was that the dani/jamie relationship ending up as the central one felt wrong; that pairing never clicks, mostly due to cliched and/or vague writing and a lack of chemistry btwn the actors

I ended up liking this less than Hill House despite the ending being less of a shitshow

agree with this and the bit behind your spoiler tag. Hill House was good throughout but flubbed the ending, whereas this one I think peaked with the Hannah episode (ep 5), which I thought was fantastic and heartbreaking and tied all the different plot strands together really well.

Overall, I found the season both overstuffed and overlong - feels like it could have ended an episode earlier and nothing much would have been missed. At the same time, several of the stories didn't seemed fleshed out enough e.g. whether Dani ever really dealt with her guilt over her ex-fiance's death; or why Rebecca, someone who seemed otherwise smart and reasonable, could be so easily taken in by Peter Quint not once but multiple times. She seemed like an underwritten character.

Btw, I know there's another Rebecca film on Netflix right now but I thought Ms Jessel was a nice homage to Du Maurier's Rebecca, who also haunts her replacement and likes to hang out in the west wing. 

re: Rebecca/Peter, Rebecca was definitely underwritten but, I mean, smart women are taken in by handsome creeps all the time!

I hope the Owen and Hannah actors get folded into future Flanaganverse things. The kids were uncannily good at times as well.

getting your wish sooner rather than later - Rahul Kohli who plays Owen is on Flanagan's new series Midnight Mass https://www.slashfilm.com/midnight-mass-production/

Did you watch iZombie, Simon? He's great and fun in that too.

holy shit that was HIM????

I only saw s1 of that so maybe I'd kinda forgotten about him.

yeahhh Dr Ravi Chakrabarti! <3

the plot got too complicated after a while, but iirc he really comes into his own in the later seasons when the show started to focus more on the rest of the ensemble and not just on Liv.

i'm only five episodes into bly manor, there are a few annoying things about it and many good things about it, but my main reaction is "gay! gayyyyyy. gay. gaaaaay"

i never notice when accents are bad and it's for the best that i'm never told about it

the ending isn't bad but after the climax ends the last episode just wanders through a long boring coda. they should've just added twenty minutes to episode 8

otherwise i found that very enjoyable, though: why was this set in the '80s

i also have yet to see hill house, which i'm gonna start right away

it's amazing how much i loved the gay shit until it became super corny and the entire fucking focus

yeah, incorrect central relationship for sure

I personally got a huge kick out of drunk henry vs evil henry but this does not seem to be universally agreed upon

oh i liked that episode a lot

amazed that no one at the framing device party was like "why did you tell that story in a super weird way"

I liked that "If you go back and watch the series again, in every episode there’s probably somewhere between eight and 10 ghosts that are just hidden in plain sight that we called no attention to but they’re there"

it is truly "shit moving in the background: the show"

i love it tbh

I totally didn't get the framing device. Like Flora wasn't like, who are you and why are you at my wedding? And why do parts of this story seem familiar. And the older version of the cook and older henry just being like, sure, tell this story, you know the one we made a big deal out of the kids not remembering, definitely no chance this will jog any memories.

it was sooo silly

idk what the general reception of episode eight was but i kinda thought the diversion into the origins of the haunting was really well-done and at least two of the jump scares totally got me

like i basically loved this until the last 40 minutes, so much agonizing exposition just to convey that years have passed and yet the haunting persists

I would have liked ep 8 a lot better without the narration. hell, I'd have dug it more in full silent film mode, that would have been sick

yeah you’re right the narration is kinda overbearing

The narrator had an awful accent as well.

Set in the 80s so people were old in the framing device, also no mobile phones/google.

I mostly enjoyed it, the characters and story were decent. Nothing came close to the creepiness of the Bent Neck Lady, though.

This was daft but we stuck with it. The accents and clunky dialogue almost sunk the whole thing (in a lake); when Garth Merenghi gives the most convincing characterisation, you're in trouble. (Though even he was required to say "I couldn't do the math" or variations thereon, which was risible).

"I couldn't do the math" or variations thereon, which was risible

Yes! This massively bugged me as well and instantly made me think of this: https://coub.com/view/11skso

Set in the 80s so people were old in the framing device, also no mobile phones/google.

and so they could drop “tainted love” in the soundtrack. totally needless imo

glad to see Rahul Kohli is sticking around for Flanagan's next thing

Is he doing more Hauntings also?

none in the pipeline yet AFAIK but I'm sure Netflix is after him for more of them, anecdotally it seems to be one of their most popular "series"

lmao i don't know why i held off on hill house (well i do but it's for the very silly reason of loving the book so much that the extreme looseness of the adaptation made me suspicious of it) but it's phenomenal

Hill House is def better even if it falls apart even worse at the end than Bly Manor did

the middle stretch is just primo Flanagan, playing to all of his strengths

episode five was major

And six!

wow long takes galore in episode 6

the performances in hill house do make me wish the most talented member of the ensemble, victoria pedretti, weren't playing a character who's dead. guess that's why she's the lead in bly manor

The thing keeping me away from Bly Manor is that Hill House was so long and too filled with conversations of half-arsedly written dialogue and exposition. It could have been half the length, easily. And it needed more ghosts.

Er, Bly Manor probably has more talking and fewer ghosts.

Bugger.

And it sounds like you're really gonna hate his next series, No Ghosts, Just Talking

The Talky Ghost, and the big twist is he's not actually a ghost.

OK, a compromise - maybe some ghosts sitting about discussing the 'Like A Virgin' video?

bly manor = perfectly splendid schmaltz. I liked hill house a lot more too, scarier and I thought the way they handled luke’s character was actually interesting

oh my god i do not care about the ghost shirley fucked

lmao as reported this blows

lol I completely forgot about that plot stand for good reason

i mean he wasn't even a ghost, he just haunted her or whatever, but god, so lame, i do not need her to have cheated on her husband to realize she has flaws, she's extremely sanctimonious, that's her character flaw, it's good enough

The end was fine, good even, in terms of story but they fucked up the tone and way overexplained what you were supposed to take from it

i ultimately agree with this old chap post bc i feel like you could salvage something worthwhile from the last hour if you cut... so much of the dialogue

one nice thing i'll say about the finale: abigail being real was a great choice

yes! that was a nifty surprise

I don’t know if this is true cause I haven’t seen enough of his works but Mike Flanagan seems Bad.At.Endings. Of five of his works I’ve seen, the only one that had an ending I legitimately liked was “Hush”.

I love Oculus' downer ending.

He should have brought in Frank Darabont as a consultant on Gerald's Game to fix that awful King ending, though, for sure.

I love Oculus' downer ending.

― it bangs for thee (Simon H.)

Didn't realise he did Oculus!

I haven’t seen Oculus - will check that out. It’s the one with Karen Gillan yes?

Gerald’s Game was so good until those last five minutes, makes me genuinely angry just thinking about it lol

yep that's the one! iirc she has a memorable entrance

I never saw Gerald's Game but I will say I am deeply indebted to the book because it taught me that I didn't need to finish reading something if I hate it

Absentia ending was alright

As we barrel toward the start of production on @intrepid's new @netflix series THE MIDNIGHT CLUB, based on the work of Christopher Pike, I'm honored and thrilled to announce our cast:

— Mike Flanagan (@flanaganfilm) February 1, 2021

Christopher Pike! 12-year-old me would've been stoked about this lol

oh and I finally saw Oculus. The climax is better than most Flanagan endings but I still wouldn't exactly call it good - somehow it was both heavily foreshadowed AND seemed to come out of nowhere

Oculus isn't perfect but it manages to be a good movie about an evil mirror, and that's enough for me

that is true - as always, saved by great character work and a strong emotional core

is this the thread where we can discuss Midnight Mass? I'm on the final two episodes now - so far it's got both Flanagan's best and absolute worst tendencies on display, but i'm still mostly into it.

it's less scary than the two Hauntings, but potentially more traumatising for anyone who had a strict religious upbringing

it is good though?

I like it! But I can see how it can test some viewers' patience - it's slow-going to start with and he does love those goddamn monologues/long conversations. They hit hard on some occasions and completely kill the show's momentum on others.

Excellent cast though - Hamish Linklater esp but almost everyone is on point, which helps to distract from some of the clumsier writing. pleasantly surprised by the accurate and thoughtful portrayal of Muslim characters in this too.

And it sounds like you're really gonna hate his next series, No Ghosts, Just Talking

― it bangs for thee (Simon H.), Monday, November 23, 2020 2:03 AM (ten months ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is not entirely inaccurate, lol