If you're behind the curve like me, The Haunting of Hill House is a 10-episode series loosely based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name. In two timelines, it follows a family's destruction upon coming into contact with the titular evil house. Horror and suspense ensues.
This series shows what you can accomplish when you map a story out for a specific number of episodes and don't worry about a need to extend it for an unknown number of additional seasons. This story is carefully planned with lots of linkages and plot twists along the way. Some, you'll see coming. Others, you won't. The moments you do perhaps run ahead of the story don't detract from the ability to enjoy it, as The Haunting of Hill House has a lot more going for it than just surprise.
For one thing, the show is often genuinely suspenseful; this horror is not only about "jump scares" or gore. Effectively creepy images abound, from intense center-frame moments to fleeting glimpses of things out of focus in the background. Hill House is unnerving fun.
The casting is outstanding. It's big enough that there's plenty of room to debate the stand-outs; I'd praise Kate Siegel, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Timothy Hutton as the performers who have to do the most heavy lifting. But indisputably, this is also one of the best assemblages of child actors in years, rounding out the Crain family in the extensive scenes set in the past.
If you've heard anything about The Haunting of Hill House, it might be the critical buzz surrounding episode 6, "Two Storms." It's an showy episode designed to look almost entirely like a single camera take. Unlike many famously long "single take" sequences, there are far fewer tricks in this episode to conceal camera cuts. Filmed digitally (and thus free of the constraints of a film canister), there really are only a handful of cuts over the course of 50 minutes -- and it's filled with extensive on-set practical effects and ultra-precise blocking of camera and actors (again, including child actors). It might actually cross the line into being too impressive and clever for its own good; I'm not convinced this directorial approach serves the story so much as it dazzles the audience with craftsmanship. Still, it's damn impressive.
It's also possible the ultimate ending of the story gets a little too sentimental for the horror trappings? But a story grounded in characters needs to do right by those characters in the end, and I certainly can't easily imagine a stronger ending than the one that's here.
In all, I'd give The Haunting of Hill House a B+. I'm probably so far behind the crowd here that anyone I know who would like it has already seen it. But I'll take a chance anyway: if you're a horror fan and haven't watched it, you're missing out.
1 comment:
I read this back when you posted it, and we'd already started to sniff a bit at Bly House, so it came in the nick of time to let me know I should watch the precursor show first.
So Tricia and I have been watching this, about an episode a week or so.
The main initial pull for me was the cinematography of Episode 6 that you mentioned; I wanted to get far enough through the show as quickly as I could to see what that was about. But the show is genuinely great, and we/I quickly decided to go at it slowly.
SO, as it would happen, I'd forgotten that catalyst entirely by the time we got to episode 6, and as ashamed as I am to admit it, I DID NOT NOTICE.
What I DID notice was that the episode seemed genuinely extra creepy in a way I couldn't put my finger on at the time. So maybe it's far better to have gone in not looking for the past excitement of my Intro to Film class, and just experience it as a newb. Not realizing WHY I was feeling creeped out was a definite bonus (I just went back and started it up to remember which episode it had been. Too bad no one takes Shirley's advice voiced at the START of the episode). :)
-- joshua
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