Mike Flanagan
The Haunting of Hill House

"No living organism can continue for long to maintain their mental health in conditions of absolute reality: even birds and grasshoppers, they say, can dream. Hill House, insane, stood alone against the hills containing within itself only darkness, it had been so for eighty years and could remain that way for another eighty. Inside, the walls continued to be upright, the bricks stood next to each other, the floors were firm, and the doors sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone".

After this opening, I choose to give The Haunting of Hill House a chance, the series on Netflix (very) loosely inspired by the 1959 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson. I haven't read the novel, but this intriguing start shared by the series attracts me and leads me to thoughts of reconciling with the Ghost stories genre, which I have sporadically visited and almost abandoned after watching things like The Others and The Sixth Sense. I'm certainly not the perfect viewer for this genre, perhaps because I belong to that group that sides with the ghost, as long as it is cruel and angry. Let's be clear. You're granted a complicated life, assorted abuses, a usually violent death (whether induced by others or self-induced), and your soul is stuck between two dimensions. So you should have the right to brood in blissful solitude over your fate without being bothered by people with the expression of Treasury Bonds arrivals who invade your home and even try to mess it up. Right? The least is to massacre them, perhaps leaving only one survivor as a reminder to keep a respectful distance for the earthly populace.

Maybe this is why I seldom engage with the genre, but I certainly despise plots where I am presented with a good ghost, from Ghost to the disoriented ghosts of The Others and those of The Sixth Sense who play the savior of the world. This might be why among the less ancient things, I fondly remember only the first The Ring, where I was wildly cheering for the ghost-girl. This might be why with this Haunting I overcame my aversion towards Netflix series and paid attention to something that seemed to promise a healthy ferocity of ghosts towards a wealthy American family, the Crains, an architect wife and a real estate husband or something like that with a varied offspring, who embed themselves in a splendid neo-Gothic mansion intending to renovate it and then sell it. Because that's what they do for a living.

Rightly, the house starts to rebel. Nothing major. The bare minimum. Closed doors that swing open, the youngest daughter sees a woman with a bent neck, the little brother doubles with a ghost in the basement and the inevitable imaginary friend, walls shaken by thuds, and there's even a reference (I want to believe intended) to the great H.P. Lovecraft with his tale Cool Air, as mother Crain repeatedly feels cold drafts. They seem the usual standard elements of a haunted house, but director Mike Flanagan, a specialist in the genre (I see he directed things like Oculus, Ouija, Gerald’s Game) doses them impeccably, with an apparently calm rhythm, alternating jumpscares with moments of false relaxation, developing the tone of the narrative in increasingly dark spirals. He uses effective framing, plays with the details of the house, takes full advantage of the unquestionable skill of the actors, starting with the children.

So far, so good. The problem is that I didn’t consider it's a series, with a string of ten episodes, each averaging about an hour. So much, too much time to cover. Flanagan resolves the issue by transforming the story into a family drama. The five Crain children have grown up but continue to be haunted by the memory of what happened long ago in the house. Thus, in the early episodes, the stories and dramas of each of them develop, alternating with flashbacks of the episodes in the house. However, the necromantic charm of the mansion and its charming presences progressively takes a back seat to dwelling on the psychic contortions of our protagonists. All blame lies with those nasty ghosts of Hill House, Flanagan reminds us, who must also go on tour to haunt the five former Crain children in their homes. Perhaps. But the downtime inevitably accumulates, and the personal stories of our protagonists frankly seem cloying and afflicted with déjà vu. I reach the fifth episode exhausted, where there is an undeniable uptick in the horror climax at the expense of introspective indulgences, but I am not deluded, as the direction Flanagan wants to go is now clear, probably opposite to the words of the opening. So, I stop at the beginning of the sixth episode, characterized by a virtuosic long take, which I’m uncertain to define as masterful or academic. This way, I avoid the spoiler hazard and revealing too much to those who haven’t yet seen the series.

I abandoned, for now, out of exhaustion, and with not a few doubts about a product I would define as technically flawless but which has essentially disappointed my naive initial expectations. Moreover, I repeat, I am certainly not an expert in this genre, so I would be happy to discover opinions on this series from those who understand more than the writer.