Haunting of Hill House

Okay so we know that I love scary movies and I watch a lot of them. But there has been this trend, specifically on Netflix lately of scary TV shows. None of which I have ever really gotten into. I just never sat down long enough to get through one of them. I would argue that this trend started with the release of the Haunting of Hill House. I remember living with girls at the time that absolutely loved it and I had only seen glimpses but never the whole show. Well we recently started watching it and I have to say I understand the fixation.

Haunting of Hill House does an excellent job of combining traditional horror tropes with just fantastic storytelling giving the audience something new and interesting to watch.

It is based on a book and though I have not read the source material, if it is half as creepy as its streaming counterpart it's got to be a great read. I love that light and sound are used in such a way that they are almost characters themselves. A single flickering light, the way darkness is used (in a way that the audience can still see what is going on), jump scares when you don’t actually anticipate them are all ways the show does a great job of reeling you in and creeping you out.

We are centered around a seven person family and though each of these kids clearly has their own trauma going on the only ones that I don’t hate are Nell and Theo. Nell being her own worst nightmare was an amazing twist, I totally saw it coming but the way they did it was fantastic. I love that they essentially gave an episode to each kid so we could see exactly what the house did to each character. I think we’ve all concluded that Steven sucks (at least I hope we have). I mean the man exploited his siblings' trauma to make money without ever having to go through any of the terrifying stuff that they did.

The pacing of the episodes is phenomenal. Lately on streaming services we are lucky to get 43-45 minute episodes as if we are still leaving time for commercials but each of the episodes in Hill House are at least an hour, 2 episodes being 70 minutes. Which tells me that the writers took exactly as long as they needed to tell the story without being bound by network requirements. Which some writers are still adhering to despite writing for streaming services now.

It is the appropriate amount of scary. There are certain scenes that I absolutely fucking hate because their scary and I love that. The show does a great job of getting into literally everyone’s deepest fears. Things jumping out of you from the dark? Check. Bugs crawling out of dead bodies? Check. Feeling like you are paralyzed while bad things are happening around you so you feel helpless? Check. It really does a great job of tackling real fears and putting them on screen for you to deal with internally later.

Overall I really love the show. I am not sure what took me so long to watch it but Mike Flanagan did a fantastic job and he has so many more projects on Netflix that I can not wait to watch. He is clearly a creator that has found his style (including actors he likes to work with) and I think that's great. I also think delivering scary stories in a TV show format is brilliant. I think there is more narrative potential in TV and to use that to explore fear is genius.