The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Oct. 17th, 2018 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexxkayFirst things first: despite the “based on” this is NOT Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It has some substantial quotations from Jackson’s text, and considerably more paraphrases and echoes. Nonetheless, the plot, characters, and even tone are all significantly different. While this TV show is undeniably inspired by Jackson’s novel, it is not an “adaptation” in the normal sense.
Despite that, Writer/director Mike Flanagan has yet to make an unsuccessful story. This is the first time he’s made anything of this length (10 episodes of about an hour each), and you might worry for the first few episodes that the pacing was too slow. It is a slow build, but a steady one, as he puts all his pieces in place, including many that you don’t realize were there until hours later. By the midpoint, there were no more complaints about pacing. If anything, some sequences bordered on the too intense.
The show is an ensemble piece. There are seven main characters and many more supporting. Pleasantly, even most of the small parts get their moment in the spotlight. While Flanagan is certainly capable of bravura, show-off direction (one episode features some astoundingly long takes), he’s also fond of giving characters significant monologues where he simply puts the camera in front of them and lets them act. One of them in particular struck both Kestrell and I as the equivalent of Quint’s speech from Jaws; it came out of nowhere and just completely transformed the tone and raised the stakes.
The one thing that I would say is completely shared between the novel and the show is that they both posit a world which definitely contains scary, unexplained supernatural things – but in which the supernatural is not remotely as terrifying as the experience of lonely human beings attempting to connect with one another (and all too often failing). Many of the most harrowing scenes contain little or no supernatural element, just human dynamics taken to extremes.
I admit that I felt conflicted about the final 20 minutes. A surprising (to me) number of the characters got happy endings, to an extent that I don’t feel was quite earned. But that’s not going to stop me from watching it again (after some recovery time). I wholeheartedly recommend this show to the discriminating horror fan, or for fans of highly emotional drama.
Despite that, Writer/director Mike Flanagan has yet to make an unsuccessful story. This is the first time he’s made anything of this length (10 episodes of about an hour each), and you might worry for the first few episodes that the pacing was too slow. It is a slow build, but a steady one, as he puts all his pieces in place, including many that you don’t realize were there until hours later. By the midpoint, there were no more complaints about pacing. If anything, some sequences bordered on the too intense.
The show is an ensemble piece. There are seven main characters and many more supporting. Pleasantly, even most of the small parts get their moment in the spotlight. While Flanagan is certainly capable of bravura, show-off direction (one episode features some astoundingly long takes), he’s also fond of giving characters significant monologues where he simply puts the camera in front of them and lets them act. One of them in particular struck both Kestrell and I as the equivalent of Quint’s speech from Jaws; it came out of nowhere and just completely transformed the tone and raised the stakes.
The one thing that I would say is completely shared between the novel and the show is that they both posit a world which definitely contains scary, unexplained supernatural things – but in which the supernatural is not remotely as terrifying as the experience of lonely human beings attempting to connect with one another (and all too often failing). Many of the most harrowing scenes contain little or no supernatural element, just human dynamics taken to extremes.
I admit that I felt conflicted about the final 20 minutes. A surprising (to me) number of the characters got happy endings, to an extent that I don’t feel was quite earned. But that’s not going to stop me from watching it again (after some recovery time). I wholeheartedly recommend this show to the discriminating horror fan, or for fans of highly emotional drama.