The Haunting of Hill House: Series Review

Image Credit: IMDb

“What would happen if I took A Haunting in Connecticut, and made it into a TV show?” This, I assume, is the question Director Mike Flanagan of Gerald’s Game fame asked himself when he decided to make Netflix’s latest Original Series, The Haunting of Hill House.

The Haunting of Hill House is based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t testify to whether or not it was a good adaptation, but I can certainly attest to the fact that it is a very good series.

Hill House follows the tragic story of the Crain family, who move into the ancient Hill House with the hope of fixing it up and selling it. The series alternates between the family’s stay in the Hill House and the present day, where the Crain children struggle to come to grips with the events that shaped their lives, and try to find ways to explain away the things they saw.

Hill House is, to put it mildly, phenomenal. After dealing with a series of poorly received films and TV shows, the network has turned back to Mike Flanagan, the man who gave them the syndicated Gerald’s Game, and Flanagan does not disappoint. The series deals with a plethora of issues, especially those relating to family matters. The show takes on the impacts of issues like suicide and addiction, but what is especially dear to the series is the issue of maternity and paternity. And what makes this better is that the characters react to these issues in ways that make them feel entirely human. Whether it’s the wary way they deal with their brother, a recovering drug addict, or the way they try to comprehend the suicide of a close relative, the Crain children feel like they could leap off the screen at any moment. The show also features some of the best-written dialogue I’ve ever seen — but none of that would be possible if it weren’t for the incredibly talented cast.

The cast of The Haunting of Hill House is a team of tried and true veteran actors and actresses, all of whom deliver their scenes with a passion that would put most Oscar winners to shame. It’s hard to pick a stand-out role here, but I think I have to give it to Kate Siegel (Gerald’s Game), who plays middle child Theodora Crain. But everyone here is absolutely great, and everyone here is worthy of an Emmy nod. Even the child actors, who play the Crains when they were children, would give the Stranger Things kids a run for their money — a great feat considering how young some of them are. These kids have a future, so don’t be surprised if they start popping up in triple A films about twenty years from now.

Netflix’s strategy for its series generally seems to be to give their creators as much money and time as they need, and trust that the investment will pay off. This is the strategy that gave us breakout series like House of Cards and Stranger Things, but it’s also the strategy that gave us Neo Yokio and Open House. But in Mike Flanagan’s capable hands, that strategy has once again paid off. Flanagan was clearly given room to experiment, and he pulled out every trick in his considerable book. One episode, for example, features only fifteen or sixteen cuts in total, most of which take place at the very end — meaning that most of the 55 minute long episode was done in just seven or eight cuts. I have no idea how hard that was for the cast and crew to pull off, but the results are more than worth it. The episode is basically nonstop tracking shots of the characters as they move through their home on an especially chaotic night, and is a feat of filmmaking that few shows can hope to emulate.

What’s also very noteworthy are the special effects. While they’re extremely high quality, more often than not, Flanagan chooses not to use them, instead relaying on what should be the guiding principle of a horror director; that what we can imagine is always scarier than what we can be shown. The ghosts are there in the show, but more often than not, they’re cloaked in shadow, or hiding behind a corner, just out of sight. A doorknob will rattle, and the suspense builds, because we know that on the other side of that door is something terrifying. The show expertly builds suspense as the scenes go on, so that when we finally see the ghosts in all their glory, it’s all the more terrifying.

Hill House also has a very unique relationship with time. Events is not shown in chronological order, but rather in order of perspective. Not only does the series go back and forth between the childhoods and presents of the Crain children, but it will go back and forth between the characters. For example, the first episode is all about the eldest son, Steven Crain (Michel Huisman). It focuses on some of his experiences growing up in Hill House, and also one day of his life. The second episode focuses on the second eldest, Shirley Crain (Elizabeth Reaser), and shows her childhood experiences in Hill House, and gives her perspective on the same events that we watched Steven go through in the previous episode. This is what makes episode six’s refusal to use any cuts so special — it literally brings all of these perspectives together as they wander through the same building. The show steadfastly refuses to focus on chronological time, instead simply focusing on the perspective of one of the particular characters. In the hands of a lesser director, or lesser actors, this would result in an unrecoverable mess, but Mike Flanagan and his cast pull it off with incredible panache.

Now, I’m not someone who watches a lot of horror stuff, so this series scared the crap out of me. But I feel that even die-hard horror fans will find themselves checking under their beds before they sleep after watching Hill House. With its phenomenal casting, impeccable directing, and absolutely stellar writing, it’s the perfect Halloween binge-watch. I literally can’t think of a bad thing to say about it. Go watch it. Now. And don’t worry, that really is just your coat hanging on your bedpost, not some shadowy demon coming to kill you in the night.

Or is it?

5/5 stars