Hello There!
So, it's Spooky Month. Which I figured that means I should talk about spooky things. Because... That's what people do? Do people really just watch and read horror stuff in October?
Anyway!
The Haunting of Hill House
How can a house, just a collection of bricks, wood, and glass have that much power over people?
Dr. Montague
I will try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible.
About/Summary
The Haunting of Hill House is a horror mini-series created and directed by Mike Flanagan. It originally aired on Netflix in 2018.
The show follows the Crain family (parents, Hugh and Olivia, and their five children, Steven, Shirley, Theo, Nell, and Luke), who in 1992 lived in Hill House while Hugh and Olivia, were fixing it up to sell it. Which would have been okay, if the house wasn't evil and full of ghosts. 26 years later the family is still poorly dealing with the aftermath of that summer.
Content/Trigger Warnings
Animal Death
Suicide
Sex
Child Sexual Assault
Drug Use
Major Character Death
Child Death
Murder
Blood and Gore
Tropes
I was going to list all the tropes that I noticed while watching the show, but... my observational skills are sometimes shit. And there are so many tropes that I don't even know. So, here's a link to the TVtropes listing of all the tropes in the show. I'm just going to talk about a few of them.
Character Focus - I really liked how most of this show's episodes focused on one character. You got five episodes for each of the kids, and then two episodes for the parents. It really let you get to know all of the characters and see what they went through.
Dark is not Evil - The house is haunted, but not all the ghosts are evil. And I like that. Why do ghosts always gotta be the bad guys? Sometimes they're just dead people who like to chill out and be spooky.
Reusable Lighter Toss - I fucking hate this trope. Like, do these people not realize how expensive Zippo lighters are? I don't care how cool it looks. Also, Luke is the one who just tosses the lighter away. I do not believe that man has a lighter. Guess he could have bought it on the way... Ya know, the trope makes sense if you headcanon that Luke bought the lighter on the way...
Characters/Casting
All of these characters are flawed as shit. They're likable, but also very frustrating. Casting was great. And the child actors did a fabulous job. Which is usually pretty hit-and-miss. No insult to child actors, but sometimes they're just not that remarkable. But these kids did a fantastic job.
Atmosphere/Setting
The whole show is spooky as fuck. Even scenes that aren't supposed to be that spooky have an unsettling feeling.
The major setting is Hill House, which is fantastic looking. And spooky as fuck at the same time. Fantastically spooky.
Adaptation?
This is inspired by the book by Shirley Jackson. I haven't read the book so I have no thoughts on this topic really.
Plot
The plot is twisty and turny. There is a nonlinear narrative, which means it bounces around in the timeline and you just have to keep up. Which wasn't too hard as long as you pay attention.
How diverse is it?
Slightly diverse.
The main characters (The Crain Family) are all white. One is queer though, so yay for that. A lot of the side characters aren't white people.
Costuming
Costuming was good. I mean, it was a modern(ish) story so there wasn't a lot of elaborate costumes. Aside from a few of the ghosts. Which, Poppy's outfit was *chef's kiss* As was Nell's wedding dress. And the costuming for the 1992 bits was pretty spot on.
Overall Thoughts
I loved this show. And it is definitely one that I can't put on as background noise because it always sucks me in. One reason being the hidden ghosts. Here and here are videos about those. Every time I watch it I try to see how many I can spot. Another reason is that it is a very good fucking show. But sad. Seriously. This is not a happy show. It is sad. Very sad. It is more sad than scary most of the time. In my head, it is filed under "spooky show that made me cry".
One of my favorite scenes is the "did you just punch me in the book?" scene. It makes me laugh every time. The dialogue. Theo and Shirley's facial expressions. The fact that it is a little bit of comedy in the middle of some drama-heavy spooky shit. The whole scene is just *chef's kiss*
That's all for this one. See y'all on Saturday.
