The Haunting of Hill House (2018) (Review)

[selenak]

bimo wrote an enthusiastic review of The Haunting of Hill House, Netflix edition, which made me check it out. Which I hadn’t intended originally. The Robert Wise adaption of Shirley Jackson’s novel is the best horror movie ever, as far as I’m concerned, which is why I stayed the hell away from the late 1990s remake. However, Bimo in her review pointed out this wasn’t a remake/adaption, and having watched it now, I agree: it relates to both Jackson’s novel and the Wise movie as the Ron Moore helmed Battlestar Galactica does to the 1970s tv series, which is to say, there are some shared names and premises, but they tell an altogether different story. This works for me far better than if the tv miniseries had attempted yet another remake.

The story which Mike Flanagan is telling in this new tv miniseries is one about a family, haunted in more senses than one, and which I feel is more Stephen King (who is a great admirer of Shirley Jackson’s) in tone and themes than S.J.. (And btw, I was amused to no end at the naming of the two oldest siblings at the centre of the new story. The three younger ones are Theo(dora), Luke and Eleanor/Nell, all names from Jackson’s original tale, but the two older ones are Shirley and Steve.) (Dad is Hugh, as in Lovecraft, I presume. I haven’t figured out whom Mom aka Olivia is named after - hit me?) Not just in terms of the story structure - we have two timelines, the present and flashbacks to the childhood of our heroes, when the Craine family had the bad luck of encountering Hill House for the first time. The flashbacks aren’t linearly ordered but thematically - the first five episodes (of ten) are each focused on a different sibling, giving us their povs, and thus of course overlap, but even after they circle around the core event - what happened in Hill House that created the dysfunctional adult lot we see before us, and what led up to said tragedy.

The reason why this reminded me more of King than Jackson isn’t just the interwovenness of flashbacks and present day action (which broiught It the novel to mind) but that the story is unabashedly about grief, loss, healing, and forgiveness. The later is very unlike Jackson’s story, and in the last episode’s last thirty minutes or so, it wanders off into the unabashedly sentimental. Whether or not this works for you depends, I suppose, whether you prefer Jack Torrance in Kubrick’s adaption of King’s own take on the Haunted House trope, The Shining (mad before arriving at the Overlook, redeemability never a question) or Jack Torrance in King’s original novel (could have saved himself if making a couple of different decisions, does even at the last when taken over by the hotel hold on to a core that gives him one moment of grace and forgiveness with his son where he’s able to fight back the hotel’s influence one last time). King likes doing this - not for all of his fallen characters, but for many. And more often than not, his main characters, having gone through hell in the course of the story, end up at least partially healed and able to help each other. This, err, is not what happens in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

Now, the main characters of Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House are five siblings plus their parents, and if done well, I adore intense, messed up family relationships, so I was really game for this series. In terms of looks and aesthetics, the show doesn’t quite manage Robert Wise’s artistic restraint (the terror of Wise’s The Haunting is achieved by suggestion alone; you never, ever see a single monster or some gore in that movie), but compared to what’s common today, it uses its explicit moments sparingly and prefers the “in the corner of your eye something isn’t quite right” approach more often than not. It’s tremendously effective. If, however, we wouldn’t buy the child actors and the adult actors as the same people, or wouldn’t care about the Craine family, full stop, it would all be in vain, and thus I report with relief I cared, and the casting works beautifully, paying off the two time lines. Speaking of actors: around the middle of the series we get a few scenes between Eleanor and her therapist. He looks strangely familiar, and googling told me I was not mistaken - it was indeed Russ Tamblyn, who played Luke in the original Haunting, more recently Dr. Jacoby in Twin Peaks (that other therapist of a haunted girl), and is of course most famous as Tony’s bff Riff in West Side Story. If someone manages a crossover extravaganza where Wise!Luke, Flanagan!Montague and Jacoby are all the same person, I’ll be thrilled. More seriously, though, Tamblyn’s cameo does at least offer the possibility that the tv show is set in the same universe as the Robert Wise movie, and provides Eleanor’s therapist for an entirely different, sinister motive for urging what he urges her to do.

In conclusion: ideal to marathon this close to Halloween. Of course, in a world where news about journalists getting executed via bonesaw is greeted with presidential reassurance that the people who did it are just as innocent as the new judge at the US Supreme Court, these fictional horrors have tough competition, but be assured: they’ll leave you less disturbed than reality does.

Comments

[bimo]

You know, I thought of you when I wrote said entry, mostly because of the sibling dynamics. *veg*

So glad you enjoyed! :)

Oh, and as for the names: I was thinking of Lovecraft as well, but when I went over to Wikipedia in order to check, I found out that H.P. actually stands for Howard Phillips.

My best guess is that TV version Hugh is named directly after the very Hugh Crain, who in both the Wise and the Jackson version is mentioned as the original builder and owner of Hill House.

[selenak]

Ah,that makes sense. Can't get over Lovecraft being a Howard, though - these days that name is united to "Stark" in my mind. ;)

Any ideas about Olivia? And thank you so much for pointing me towards the series.

[bimo]

You are welcome! :)

Absolutely no clue regarding Olivia, however. In case the name is derived from Shirley Jackson as well, I'm going to find out in the foreseeable future. The novel is already downloaded on my Kindle...