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Flanagan, along with fellow series writers Emmy Grinwis, Justina Ireland, Mat Johnson, Dani Parker, Rebecca Klingel, James Flanagan, and Kiele Sanchez, falls into a cyclical episodic format that delves into each Usher child and subsequent death. While that may rob the overarching story of suspense, the series writers compensate for that through inventive, gnarly extended deaths and a befitting macabre sense of humor that lets the cast vamp it up in exciting ways. After four series for Netflix, including The Haunting Of Hill House and Midnight Mass, Flanagan has really found his confident groove. He’s as adept as ever at creating a spooky mood, but his storytelling is defter than it’s been before. Past projects have had a bit of sentimentality about them, but Usher doesn’t allow itself huggy endings or nice guys to root for.
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Roderick’s dementia means his narration is frequently interrupted by sudden (and effectively spooky) hallucinations of his deceased progeny—melted by toxic waste, stabbed through the heart, or mauled by chimpanzees. Given the ultra-rich family and Big Pharma context, one assumes that Flanagan was taking notes on Succession and Dopesick. Fortunato is the manufacturer of Ligadone, a fictional painkiller that has caused an opioid epidemic, prompting a lawsuit leveled by D.A.
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It is only because of Isla that they survive; every aspect of their lives – from medicine to food – relies on her. Has appeared on PBS series' Monstrum, served on the SXSW Midnighter shorts jury, and moderated horror panels for WonderCon and SeriesFest. As we open, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), head of a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical empire, is burying the last of his six adult children.
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But in its wish-fulfillment approach to a very real tragedy, the haunting here is more fleeting and less marrow-deep than Flanagan’s best work. Even if you’re a total Poe dilettante, The Fall of the House of Usher offers pieces that’ll make you say, “I get that one! ” If you’re more of an intermediate Poe reader, you’ll be able to say, “I see where this is going! I’m guessing you’ll find the series cute in its eagerness, at least for a while. Trucco’s character is Rufus Griswold, a name shared with the 19th century scribe whose reflections on Poe after the latter’s death helped shape our possibly incorrect perception of the author as an opioid-addicted madman, which adds a layer of irony to Flanagan’s Sackler-esque prism. Flanagan also told The Wrap how The Haunting TV shows are different from The Fall of the House of Usher and why it’s not a third Haunting series.
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His oeuvre to this point has prioritized the meaning of what scares us rather than the act of being scared, but Usher proves he isn’t unmotivated by fear or uninterested in gore — he’s just choosy with his victims. It’s a rare thing for Mike Flanagan to deny his characters sympathy, and rarer still for the horror auteur to delight in their suffering. But in the characteristically dense and moody — and uncharacteristically grisly and furious — The Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan invites us to do both. Gone is the solace extended to hurting families and lovers in The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor; gone is the belief in togetherness and compassion that girded Midnight Mass and The Midnight Club. In their place, The Fall of the House of Usher serves up contempt for the wealthy, disgust with their selfishness, and glee at their increasingly gnarly demises, and that unexpected-for-Flanagan feast is bloody delicious. While you can mostly see where things are headed in a broad sense, House of Usher excels at the details, from the thematically fitting way that characters are killed to the truth behind Roderick’s deadly deal.
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But the show drowns in its uneven grasp of the source material, when it needn’t have relied on source material at all. The key to the ideal Flanagan series likely lies not with more cherry-picked adaptations, but with more stories that are entirely Flanagan’s own. Each captures the chaotic conflict of a tortured violent psyche, and each works because the show takes the time to establish their characters and then lets us see their gradual mental collapse and demise. The first win belongs to T’Nia Miller as Victorine, the heart research scientist whose pursuit of a miracle medical technology drives her into complete psychosis. When it does, the result is a wondrously bloody, pitch-perfect display of the macabre.
The catharsis the series offers is instead to its viewers, through a satire that rains catastrophe on the seemingly untouchable, and fully deserving; mercy only goes in one direction this time. With Usher, Flanagan loudly slams the door on his Netflix era, but also leaves behind a tell-tale heart that beats as irrepressibly for humanity as it does for horror. Because of this, it starts out slowly as the show attempts to introduce all of its various parts. There were some great moments — particularly when you learn the horrific ways that characters die — but it wasn’t clear how those different pieces fit together. Part of the problem is that there’s just a lot here; characters were being killed off before I even had a real sense of who they were and how they fit into the family. But after some time (for me, it was the fourth episode when things clicked), the scope of the show comes into focus and really hits its groove.
What makes this House of Usher decidedly not an anthology is the way that the writers intricately weave the main players’ stories throughout each episode. Flanagan has form with making tributes to some of horror’s most beloved oeuvres. He took on Shirley Jackson in The Haunting of Hill House (which was fabulous), Henry James in The Haunting of Bly Manor (spooky but saccharine) and Christopher Pike in The Midnight Club (meh). Thankfully, Flanagan and Poe’s sensibilities prove a winning pairing, staying on the edge of terror without cascading into jump scares and sentimentality. Guilt permeates every frame of Flanagan’s Poe universe, and buys into not so much the horror as the terror. Whatever level you’re at, it’s a formula for a series of moment-to-moment effectiveness, with some cleverness and much playful horror.
Netflix’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Is a Gruesome Family Drama Wrapped in a Web of Edgar Allan Poe: TV Review - Variety
Netflix’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Is a Gruesome Family Drama Wrapped in a Web of Edgar Allan Poe: TV Review.
Posted: Wed, 11 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Roderick has come from a miserable childhood with a puritanical, sickly mother who believes that “pain and suffering are the kiss of Jesus”. As a parent himself, Roderick doesn’t fare much better, having six children by five different women who range from obnoxious hedonists (Napoleon and Prospero Usher) to despicable creeps (Frederick, Tamerlane and Victoria) to obnoxious, despicable hedonist creeps (Camille). The family is made up of Flanagan’s regular ensemble of actors, and to buy them as relatives requires a lot of suspension of disbelief, but for Flanagan fans, there’s great fun to be had seeing how these favourites fit into his new tale of terror. Ruth Codd (the highlight of The Midnight Club) plays Roderick’s much younger wife Juno, a former heroin addict whose life was turned around thanks to the drugs the Ushers peddle, while Rahul Kohli, Henry Thomas and Kate Siegel each take on a dastardly member of the Usher brood. Alongside his favoured players is Mark Hamill as an unfeeling lawyer/fixer for the Usher family who sounds as if he gargles a pint of nails every morning. But as we know from the start, there’s no point in getting overly attached to them, as grisly fates are assured for all.
It’s important that Roderick and Madeline are cruel, selfish creatures—less so how they got that way. What’s more interesting is to watch how the fallout of their decisions fell on Roderick’s many children, all torn apart by some of Poe’s most memorable creations. It turns out that almost every branch of the Usher family tree has been cut by violent horror. ” “No, not before,” he replies in one of the show’s many glimpses of Flanagan’s viciously dark sense of humor. (Poe had one too.) Roderick has been haunted by all his awful children who have shuffled off this mortal coil, and it’s because it feels like the ghosts are finally coming for him that he is ready to confess. He’s having visions of monstrous ghosts, including the recurring specter of Verna (Carla Gugino), a figure that connects most of these tall tales as a sort of vengeful force of karma, the devil come to take what she’s due from a man who profited off the pain of others.
In the same article, Flanagan confirms that supernatural elements will be at play in this story. Poe has quite a hefty body of work that includes many short stories, poems, essays, and a novel. The Black Cat, The Raven, The Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, Lenore, and Annabel Lee are among Edgar Allan Poe’s most well-known stories. Flanagan and team will have a lot of potential material with Poe’s large body of work, even if they just focus on his most popular material.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” feels like Flanagan playing with form and tone in many ways, and it results in a surprisingly funny yet grisly series. Its literary origins don’t always mesh, and those familiar with Poe will realize the destination well ahead of time. It’s offset by a stunning production, numerous horror sequences, and kills that’ll delight the horror fan. It’s also another showcase of magnetic performers making the absolute most of their time on screen.
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