5 years ago, Mike Flanagan made Netflix’s scariest show ever

Over the past five years, writer-director Mike Flanagan has created not just one, but five limited series for Netflix. Every show, even if it’s last year’s The Midnight Club or 2020 The Haunting of Bly Manor, boasts Flanagan’s signature blend of intense, character-driven drama and moody horror. At the same time, their collaboration with Netflix, which technically started in 2017 gerald’s gamehas given Flanagan the opportunity to delve into various subgenres including Gothic romance, YA horror, and even giallo horror.

At the same time, Flanagan’s artistic style has gradually become more sophisticated and confident as he himself has transformed from one of the most promising emerging filmmakers of his generation into a true horror auteur. Now, Flanagan is set to end his long-standing partnership with Netflix Fall of the House of UsherA limited horror series based on the collection of short stories and poems written by Edgar Allan Poe. This series, without spoiling anything, is easily the most disgusting, meanest, and most cynical of Flanagan’s Netflix shows, all of which have been successful in their own ways.

However, his scariest and most impactful TV project to date may still be his first: 2018 hill house haunt, The show is an excellently directed, impressively cohesive limited series for 2019 as well doctor sleep, established Flanagan as one of America’s best horror voices since Stephen King. Now, in honor of its fifth anniversary, it’s time to look back and celebrate in all the ways hill house haunt Cleverly avoids many of its potential pitfalls and over the course of its 10 episodes emerges as one of the most simultaneously moving and terrifying original series produced by Netflix.

A reliable adaptation that changed it too

Based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel of the same name, hill house haunt Follows the Crain family as all its members find themselves terrorized by the supernatural forces of their titular home. like stephen king it, the series divides its time between flashbacks to its characters’ experiences as children living in its central haunted house and present-day scenes that reveal the ways in which they still remain haunted as adults. Are. When one of them, Nell (Victoria Pedretti), finds herself drawn back into the house, she opens the door for all of her siblings, as well as her father, Hugh (a superb Timothy Hutton), to come in. Come back into the house. ,

narratively, hill house haunt It owes a huge debt to both its Jackson-written source material and the stories of Stephen King, which served as an obvious additional inspiration for it. While its twin-timeline structure will sound undeniably familiar to any good horror fan, Flanagan and his team of writers set it apart by stretching it economically. Hill HouseThe story is spread across its 10 episodes and several of its installments center around an individual character. This choice not only makes it easier for Flanagan to manage the show’s mix of present-day and flashback scenes, but also ensures that Hill HouseThe early episodes are filled with scares that are specifically designed for their respective characters.

The sheer scale and ambition of Hill House enhances its effectiveness

Beyond the economy and the Swiss-watch nature of its storytelling, what happens hill house haunt What’s so impressive is how well it works despite breaking so many tried-and-true rules. Unlike many horror classics before it, most of which take place in one location during a specific time period (for example, the Exorcist, Shining), the scope of hill house hauntThe story is surprisingly huge. The series spans multiple decades, locations, and characters, most of whom spend their present-day scenes apart from each other. Despite these obstacles, Flanagan still succeeded hill house haunt A suffocatingly scary experience.

Flanagan, who directed all 10 episodes of the series, makes several recurring visual parallels throughout. hill house haunt Which stylistically ties together its twin timelines. He uses these motifs to visually pay off many of the show’s biggest twists (including the finale’s jaw-dropping red door reveal) and further strengthen its core ideas – namely, that the past is a living one. , is a breathing thing. The series’ characters spend most of its story repeatedly trying to ignore the horrors of their childhood, without confronting them – and are constantly tormented as a result. In hill house haunt, past and present do not exist at the same time, but are in active interaction with each other. When people living in the present try to ignore that fact, the ghosts of their past howl even louder.

The feeling these choices create is one of unavoidable claustrophobia. From the moment it begins and the moment it ends, there remains a sense that the show’s name-house is omnipresent and we are, as one of its characters eventually says, just slowly coming to terms with it. Digesting. The size of that achievement cannot be overstated, especially given its length and scope hill house haunt, There are 90-minute horror movies that don’t feel as impressive as Flanagan’s first Netflix series, which is why this one still deserves to be in the running as his greatest achievement to date.

hill house haunt Now streaming on Netflix.