THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL NETFLIX MOVIE
These familiar gimmicks can be tiresome in a two-hour movie in a 10-hour series, they’re exhausting. Early on, while secrets are still being preserved, “The Haunting of Hill House” leans too heavily on easy jump scares and prolonged build-ups. Backstory is teased slowly, as the series tries to balance out its family drama with the scares implied by its source material. What happened at the house - and what sent this tight-knit family spinning away from each other - is withheld for most of the first season.
Violet Mcgraw and Henry Thomas in “The Haunting of Hill House” They’ve got not three, not four, but five kids ranging between acceptable bed-wetters and “too old for that stuff.” His wife, Olivia (Carla Gugino), is the architect who can read plans and make them. Papa bear Hugh Crain (Henry Thomas) is a bit of a man of all trades who can fix pretty much anything. “Then” is at least a few decades ago, shortly after the Crain family moves into the titular Hill House in order to flip it. But despite these familiar tropes, the able-bodied actors eventually draw out a provocative, emotionally resonant story moreover, showrunner Mike Flanagan infuses enough fresh tricks to make the overall experience a treat worth savoring through Halloween.īased on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel of the same name, the Netflix original series takes place over two time periods: “then” and “now,” as the title cards so simply put it.
On the one hand, there’s a lot of familiarity about this serialized horror show: It’s set in a humungous 100-year-old mansion filled with creaking floors, self-opening doors, and lots of ghosts a sprawling cast endures various inexplicable events. “ The Haunting of Hill House” works best when it breaks from the clichéd trappings of the haunted house genre and embraces the innovation needed to bring this story to television.