As all posts on my blog, this post contains SPOILERS!!
If you have not seen The Haunting of Hill House or The Haunting of Bly Manor please go watch them and come back. Unless you don't care, it's your choice really.
This post also contains some sensitive subject matter. The shows I talk about are in the Horror genre and contain some upsetting imagery. If you're not comfortable with that I don't suggest reading this post.
So awesome news, the new season of Netflix's The Haunting just came out. I'm a huge fan of the first season and it's some of the best horror I've ever seen in recent years so I was really, really, really excited when they announced a second season. Not to mention that it was an anthology series with completely new characters so nothing that was formed in the previous season could be ruined by TV execs wanting more money (I'm talking to you Stranger Things season three/four).
Anyways, I binged the whole new season as soon as it came out.
The season takes place in Bly, England in the late 80s. The atmosphere and sets take you right back to Hill House but Bly Manor keeps its own flavour while maintaining the past standard. It stars Victoria Pedretti as Dani, an American school teacher dealing with her sexuality and past trauma that seems to follow her everywhere she goes. To try and escape from her past she picks up a job as a nanny at Bly Manor. There she joins the small staff consisting of a gardener, chef, and housekeeper to take care of two young orphaned children, Miles and Flora. These poor kids have had to deal with a lot of loss in their young lives. Their parents died two years earlier in an accident outside of the country, then their first nanny committed suicide on the property only a year ago.
Flora, the younger of the two, has a knack for seeing people/things that aren't there. She seems to be always looking over Dani's shoulder and warns Dani to "never leave her room at night". She also has a huge dollhouse full of, as Flora would say, perfectly splendid dolls. Thus setting up a great ghostly scene for the viewer.
Mike Flanagan does an incredible job of telling Hill House's story, so I was excited to see what was next concerning Bly Manor. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.
Hill House was told through a series of incomplete flashbacks and time jumps so every episode kept me intrigued for more/kept me guessing. Nothing was ever truly explained thoroughly. Even the ending was left up to interpretation, which I loved. However, with Bly Manor it seems they ditched that way of storytelling in favour of a story within a story about memory based time jumps and over explained events. Initially I thought the idea of memory based flashbacks was exciting as I didn't know exactly what they were yet but they were quickly explained and all illusion of excitement was lost.
Everything was just so clear. It was all explained and the evil was even resolved at the end. (which does not happen in the first season.)
The plot twists were really easy to guess while watching the show. In Hill House I had NO clue that Nell was the Bent Neck Lady so when we got that reveal I was in overload at how much it made sense yet confused me more. It was a door to more curiosity and intrigue. I guess the 'big twist' of Bly Manor was that the housekeeper Hannah had actually died and was one of the trapped ghosts of Bly but from the first scene Hannah had I knew that she was dead or at least something was wrong with her. It was incredibly obvious and so were the rest of the twists in the show. When Miles and Flora act weird it's actually because they're possessed by the dead characters Peter and Miss Jessel? Who would've guessed. (me, that's who. It's really not hard.)
The storytelling aspect wasn't the only thing I had a problem with, I did not enjoy the ending.
In the second last episode we are introduced to the origin of the evil in the house. WHAT?! They want us to know why the house is evil?
I will say this episode is one of my favourites (aesthetic and acting-wise) but if we're looking at the big picture it feels like they just added in a huge plot point super last minute to tie up any loose threads. If we excuse that it still doesn't excuse the disappointing ending. I guess they were trying to make it sad? Like a romance drama of sorts? Even though all of the episodes leading up to it are horror and the show is advertised as a horror. Honestly, the ending isn't really worth my explaining. It's just a 'plot twist' we could predict from a mile away and romance with a character death that's supposed to make us upset. Oh but don't forget! This is a story within a story so we must go back to where we were in the first place! Turns out our narrator is the gardener and guess what? Everyone's where she is! All of our old characters 15 years in the future.
wow. I am touched.
Speaking of our characters, I literally felt almost no empathy/sympathy for any of them. I did not care. I mean, except for Peter Quint because I'm a little bit in love with him, but that doesn't matter. As a viewer, I'm supposed to care for the characters but I found all of them so dull and unrelatable that I honestly didn't care whether they lived or died. That's not good! With Hill House one episode was dedicated to each character so the viewer could get to know them and appreciate them on an individual level. Then when the finale hit and we were supposed to care for them and wish for their survival we could because the show had given the viewer opportunities to know the characters and actually care.
As much as I rant about this show, I did enjoy watching it from episodes 1-8. The cinematography and scares are really good and it as a whole was entertaining enough. As I said to my friend Katie, "It's not a bad season. It only becomes a bad season when you've seen Hill House."
Thanks again for reading,
KIDD
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