In 2018, The Haunting of Hill House became a hit in the Halloween season for Netflix with its intergenerational story of a family tormented by supernatural beings in a haunted house. The 10-episode series was so well received that Netflix announced a follow-up project a few months later. Now The Haunting of Bly Manor offers another modern reinterpretation of a classic Gothic horror story.
The Haunting of Bly Manor premieres on Netflix on October 9, and while it feels similar to Hill House in developing its story (and even sharing several cast members with its predecessor), Bly Manor still features plenty of strong horrors and narrative twists to keep you guessing while the story is wrapped up in a new set of themes.
Show creator and co-producer Mike Flanagan returns behind the camera for The Haunting of Bly Manor, which follows an American who agrees to look after the niece and nephew of a British businessman on the family estate. Hill House actress Victoria Pedretti portrays Dani Clayton, the young governess whose experience in the family's seemingly idyllic summer home takes a terrible turn when the children act strange and supernatural beings make their presence known.
Back to the past
While The Haunting of Bly Manor is thematically different from Hill House, much of the series' story structure and framework will feel familiar for better or for worse to fans of the latter.
Flanagan has an affinity for playing with schedules and using flashbacks to make audiences unsure how key events in each character's story and the overarching story relate. This narrative technique was well used in The Haunting of Hill House, which produced many of its greatest revelations from the sudden convergence of the characters' individual storylines. This trend continues with Bly Manor, which similarly devotes large chunks of its story – in some cases entire episodes – to a character's story and perspective on events to date, and then brings that narrative detour back into the primary story arc for a revelatory aha Moment.
Resorting to this storytelling device isn't necessarily a negative for Bly Manor, as anyone familiar with Flanagan's previous work – Hill House in particular – will enter the series with a level of convenience that will allow you to spend more time on it Struggling to capture what's happening on the screen to make sense of it.
The Haunting of Bly Manor's narrative structure isn't the only element it shares with Hill House, either. One of the aspects of Hill House that gave it a hefty helping of second-viewing appeal was Flanagan's talent for adding subtle elements to scenes that anticipate future events or simply reward eagle-eyed viewers. Hill House's popularity led to countless articles about the unique ghosts that showed up in certain scenes but likely went unnoticed, and Bly Manor continues to test your attention to what is going on in the background of each scene.
These traits – along with the presence of several Hill House cast members – make Bly Manor seem a bit too familiar at times, but luckily the impressive cast performances and some significant thematic differences set the new series apart from its predecessor.
Horror with a heart
Pedretti is especially entertaining as the former school teacher who arrives at the mansion with her own serious baggage to find herself in the middle of a far more sinister ordeal. The arc of her character makes her waver between moments of heartbreaking helplessness and inspiring strength, and she makes both extremes seem equally plausible in her portrayal of a woman struggling to feel comfortable in her own skin.
T & # 39; Nia Miller and Rahul Kohli also deliver unforgettable performances as longstanding housekeepers and cooks on the property, respectively. Both actors delve deep into their characters, transforming roles that might have been readily available in the story into all-too-human characters to invest in increasingly as the terrifying story progresses.
Young actors Benjamin Evan Ainsworth and Amelie Smith appear well beyond their years as siblings Miles and Flora Wingrave, portraying their characters with just enough nuance to keep the secret of their experiences high throughout the series.
Aside from commendable performances, it's the themes of the story that ultimately set Bly Manor apart from Hill House the most.
Sentimental fear
While The Haunting of Hill House used the genre of Gothic horror to investigate how addiction, trauma, and abuse can drive wedges into a family and curl outward for generations, The Haunting of Bly Manor is at its core a story about that Power of love and memory to overcome our mortal life.
The famous (or perhaps infamous) Hill House had an audience that alternated between screaming and crying with its surprisingly resonant emotional depth, and Bly Manor does a similar feat. The individual love stories at the core of each character's arc at Bly Manor are authentic and powerful, making the entire series feel more surprising than bleak. It is not an easy feeling to make your way into a Gothic horror story, and it is thanks to Flanagan's vision for the series and its talented cast that Bly Manor can hit that tricky tone so well.
Gothic horror has always been about more than just fear, and with both The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, Flanagan has proven that he is not only aware of that fact, but himself with all of them Nuances and potentials of the genre offers. In this way, he has also brought the works of writers Shirley Jackson and Henry James back to the public – another laudable achievement – and again reminded us that the horror genre is truly timeless.
All nine episodes of The Haunting of Bly Manor premiere on October 9th on Netflix.
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