The Haunting Of Hill House Miniseries - Episode 1
As they navigate the trauma of their childhood, another trauma comes forcing them to come to terms with exactly what happened in the house. Every episode feels like a short film that balances horror and a family drama perfectly.
The Haunting of Hill House Miniseries - Episode 1
Parents need to know that The Haunting of Hill House is a tense, eerie ghost story crossed with an affecting (and very mature) family drama. Though it draws inspiration from Shirley Jackson's excellent 1959 novel of the same name, the 10-episode horror series has very little in common with the source material plot-wise; it's used merely as a jumping-off point. The series touches on issues like addiction, trauma, and mental illness, and there's a sad storyline relating to baby animals that some may find upsetting. Suicide is a running theme, and a person is shown hanging themselves. There are a couple of brief sex scenes; women are seen in lingerie but not fully nude. One character is a mortician, which means there are several shots involving dead bodies being cut open and processed. Heroin addiction is depicted, with scenes of shooting up and overdosing. Adult characters swear, smoke, and drink, often to excess. Though not as consistently gory as some modern horror series and films, there are plenty of truly chilling scares and disturbing imagery that could cause nightmares for kids both young and old.
Although the four new tenants of Hill House get along quite well, it's not long before their perfect summer setup is interrupted by some haunts. The name of the novel promises hauntings, after all. First, they begin to hear banging noises and echoes in the hallways. Doors open and close without reason. And while all of these things could be explained away by wind or the creakiness of an old house, it's hard to find an explanation when written messages start appearing on the walls. Then, Theodora finds blood all over her clothes.
Although every person in the house is touched by hauntings, Eleanor seems especially susceptible to the supernatural powers of Hill House. In fact, she begins to feel a deep connection to the house, as if she can feel and see everything the house feels and sees. Whether it's real or all in her head is unclear, but Eleanor thinks she is able to feel the others moving around the house and see what they're doing. Indeed, it seems as if the house is consuming her, and Eleanor, who has for most of her life felt closed off from the outside world, welcomes the change.
The novel is set in a haunted mansion so named "Hill House" because it lies amongst many hills. The house has a sordid past, including, as one character puts it, "suicide and madness and lawsuits." Those who know about the house's history refuse to stay in it after dark, and previous tenants of the house have left in an unexpected hurry, long before their lease ran out. Simply put, Hill House is a perfectly unsettling setting for a haunted house story.
After several such occurrences, Eleanor begins to feel an affinity with the house. Her paranoia and guilt, and her fear of the knocking sound (which she takes to be the sound of her dying mother knocking on the wall for medication Eleanor never brought her) conflate until one night, in what might be described as a manic episode, she runs through the house, scaring the other guests, and climbs up a vertiginous and rickety spiral staircase. Luke brings her back down and the others force her to leave the next day, contacting her sister and discovering the lies she told.
Like his previous Netflix miniseries hits The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass features writer/director Mike Flanagan's commitment to haunting visuals, ensemble casting, and emotional performances to balance out the sense of dread lurking under every single scene. It makes for some very compelling television, but unfortunately its compelling nature means you move through it very quickly.
In the very first episode of Midnight Mass, we see a paperback copy of Stephen King's novel 'Salem's Lot sitting on the bookshelf in Riley Flynn's childhood bedroom. It turns out to be much more than a passing Easter egg. King's novel about vampires slowly infiltrating and converting a small town is obviously a very direct influence on Flanagan's Midnight Mass, from the involvement of a priest to the various tests of faith at work in the two stories, to the central communities and the doom that comes to them. So, you could obviously follow-up the series by reading 'Salem's Lot. If you're hoping for something to watch, though, Tobe Hooper's 1979 adaptation for television is certainly worthy viewing. It features one of the single creepiest scenes in any Stephen King adaptation, and the creature design for the vampire Barlow will no doubt remind you of Midnight Mass' Angel. Oh, and opt for the long miniseries version, not the shorter, movie-length cut.
The Haunting Of Hill House season 1 episode 5 revealed the devastating truth about the bent-neck lady ghost that tormented Nell as a child. The Haunting Of Hill House is based off the 1959 novel by Shirley Jackson, which involves an investigation into a supposedly haunted house by a scholar looking for evidence of the supernatural. He brings along some companions to help with his study and the group soon find themselves in for a terrifying time. The book is considered a classic of the genre and relies on psychological chills for its scares.
This spirit haunted Nell Crane, played by Victoria Pedretti (YOU), as a girl and is a silhouetted ghost with its head twisted at an unnatural angle. Each of the Crain siblings gets an episode dedicated to them, with The Haunting Of Hill House season 1 episode 5 "The Bent-Neck Lady" focusing on Nell. This episode details her experiences in the house with the titular ghost, and how she grew up and fell in love with a medic named Arthur. Arthur tragically dies of an aneurysm one night and she's unable to help due to her sleep paralysis condition. Nell soon suffers from depression and feeling the Bent-Neck Lady is somehow responsible for Arthur's death, she returns to the abandoned Hill House alone.
A professor of parapsychology pays a team of psychics to spend a weekend at a rumored haunted house. The professor, Dr. Joyce Reardon, theorizes that the collective sensitivities of the team to paranormal activity will work toward stimulating the house to behave ever so hauntingly. The goal is to obtain verifiable data from the haunting that will hopefully legitimize the science of parapsychology. So they get to work. Ghostly stuff happens. Things get dangerous. People die.
Since the release of his full-length feature film Absentia in 2011, Flanagan has quietly yet skillfully developed a reputation as a powerhouse force to be reckoned with. The director has gone on to create hit-after-hit movies and television shows, such as the critically-acclaimed Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Hill House and the thought-provoking Midnight Mass, as well as cutting edge horror flicks like Hush, Oculus, and Doctor Sleep. He frequently collaborates on projects with Kate Siegel, Mike Flanagan's wife.
The series is an adaptation of the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw, though it incorporates multiple works from the author. Like its stunning predecessor, The Haunting of Bly Manor was a knockout with audiences, winning the Satellite Award for Best Genre Series. The miniseries is yet again an outstanding example of how talented Flanagan is, as he poignantly brings to life the spooky literary classic while delivering both chills and tender moments.
Mike Flanagan's horror mystery miniseries The Midnight Club is his latest spine-tingling project for Netflix, landing on the streaming giant just in time for spooky season. Following a group of tight-knit, terminally ill teenagers as they reside in Brightcliffe Hospice and meet up to tell scary stories at midnight, the show chronicles the characters' experiences with the supernatural after one of them passes away from their illness. Based on Christopher Pike's young adult novel of the same name, the highly-anticipated series is already making history despite having just premiered, breaking the Guinness World Record for the most scripted jump-scares in a single episode with 21 terrifying scares.
In episode 1, we see a scene in which a mysterious figure enters the pastor's house. He slides a massive chest across the floor and unlocks it. Strange events ensue. In episode 7, Monsignor Pruitt says that he bribed and lied to smuggle the Angel to Crockett Island, inside the trunk.
Put simply, Father Paul Hill is really Reverend Monsignor John Michael Pruitt, the longtime island pastor at St. Patrick's Catholic Church. The residents don't recognize him because he's about 40 years younger. The clue to his true identity was dropped early on. In episode 2, Dr. Sarah Gunning's elderly mom, Mildred, who once had a romantic relationship with Monsignor Pruitt (and a child in Sarah), addresses Father Paul by his real name, John, when he visits their house.
The prolific creators went on to serve up the second installment of The Haunting anthology and Midnight Mass was announced as their next project. In July, 2019, Deadline reported that it would be a seven-episode series and, after that ending, it seems pretty definitive it was only intended as a miniseries.
Hulu's Dopesick is an eight-episode miniseries drama demonstrating the effects of the opioid addiction epidemic across the United States. It focuses on various agencies, including Purdue Pharma, the Food and Drug Administration, and the United States Department of Justice, and their conflicts of interest.
The series description says Bly Manor is "set in 1980s England." (Worth noting here that The Turn of the Screw is 1800s-era, so it's a modern adaptation.) "After an au pair's tragic death, Henry Wingrave hires a young American nanny to care for his orphaned niece and nephew who reside at Bly Manor with the estate's chef Owen, groundskeeper Jamie and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. But all is not as it seems at the manor, and centuries of dark secrets of love and loss are waiting to be unearthed in this chilling gothic romance. At Bly Manor, dead doesn't mean gone." 041b061a72