There's something about the dark and mysterious world that keeps us awake and petrified. In spite of the chills and the petty thrills the genre promptly offers, we go back to it to drown in the well of fear it pushes us into. Netflix’s latest addition to the horror section, The Haunting of Hill House , is a ten-episode series that talks about the members of a dysfunctional family. It feels like a lengthy feature film since everything is inter-connected. If you don’t watch the show in binge-mode, you might lose the details and the Easter eggs (there are hidden ghosts in many scenes).
Writer-director Mike Flanagan’s relationship with Netflix seems to be getting stronger with every project he chooses to work on. While Flanagan’s slasher recipe, Hush , and the moody Gerald’s Game , satisfied the urges of Netflix’s regulars, his latest psychological web of horrors, The Haunting of Hill House , which is based on Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name, will draw even the naysayers to the digital platform.
Flanagan has written some of the episodes, and has directed all ten of them. This has given him the free hand to tell the story of five siblings who are dealing with grief and loss. Each of the Crain siblings – Steven (Michiel Huisman), Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser), Theodora (Kate Siegel), Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), and Eleanor (Victoria Pedretti) – has secrets to keep and evils to stay away from. But how far can they run from the truth that’s chasing after them? They’ll have to confront their demons someday, and Flanagan finds a way to flip the classic template of a haunted house to fit these ideas into the narrative.
The series picks up two significant periods – the past, where the Crains movie into a large house to renovate and sell it, and, the present, where the Crains are coming to terms with the death of Eleanor. Flanagan ropes in two sets of actors to portray the young and old versions of the Crains, and the cast has done a splendid job in sticking to their character traits. If you see Henry Thomas, who plays the father of the young kids, panting and constantly worrying about the ghastly intruders, Timothy Hutton, who stars as the older Hugh Crain, brings the same amount of efficacy to his character.
These links go beyond the thematic presentations as visually, too, the two periods are blended perfectly – for instance, in a scene, if an older character takes an apple, the younger version of the same character is seen eating it. The young and the old characters aren’t put together on the screen. They are match cuts that make them seem as though the actions of the past and the present are an on-going affair.
The first five episodes paint a clear picture of the Crain siblings. From the friendship the twins, Luke and Eleanor, share to the ghosts and dreams they are all haunted by, individual attention is paid to the characters. The role the mother and the father (Carla Gugino stars as Olivia Crain, the mother) play in shaping the faux realities of the children are also embedded in these episodes. The best of the lot, Episode 6, titled, “Two Storms,” employs long takes to take us through the two threads of the main story – in 1992, the family was busy looking for the young Eleanor who’d gone missing, and, in the present, the children are arguing in the presence of Eleanor’s cold body as they believe that their father is hiding some sinister things from them. The long takes are a master class in writing, blocking, and acting. It’s a stand out episode that’ll win a lot of awards next year.
Among the cast, I was quite stunned by Violet McGraw (the young Eleanor). She wears her vulnerability on her shoulder, and gives the other actors a run for their money. Flanagan has cherry-picked the cast and that has worked greatly in his favor. The Haunting of Hill House is a show that’ll leave you with a smile and a tear.
