Everything is beautiful
We’re looking into the lives of a beautiful family of seven who are spending a gorgeous, sun-drenched summer in dappled woods restoring a (honestly remarkably well-preserved) old, Victorian home. The details of the house are gorgeous – the stained glass, the statuary, the vine draped gables. The family is gorgeous – Carla Gugino as the mother, Olivia, is practically glowing. The clothing that Olivia wears (over the top for sure) is the kind of stuff you wished you slept in, even if it means you are destined to haunt in barely there chiffon. (Pray you die in velvet). We are drawn in by Michiel Huisman‘s bone structure and honest and effortless delivery. The children are precious. (I cannot even handle how much I love the actor who plays Young Luke, Julian Hilliard. HE IS A CUPCAKE of emotion, and I want to protect him at all costs. That young boy’s performance enhances EVERYthing that this family comes to be in the future. UGH, it’s killing me just thinking about his voice and his too big glasses and the way he looks up at everyone.) It is a BEAUTIFUL show.
Everything is dead
But underneath it all is decay. The house of course has secrets. There are ghosts lurking in the corners. Caretakers afraid to say too much. Hidden rooms. Locked rooms in plain sight. The children are sleeping alone in BED CHAMBERS. The parents are sending scared kindergartners back to bed instead of letting them sleep with them. And those precious, gorgeous children are estranged and damaged adults. And that mother? She’s long dead.
Time is meaningless
For a show about the relevance and presence of the past, time is purely plot-driven. The timelines of the series is constantly shifting and moving. We begin with Steve’s character long after he’s written several best selling novels that began with the story of his family and Hill House. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, and his reticence to indulge his fans or anyone else in their paranormal fantasies reminds me of Richard Strand from The Black Tapes offering a million dollars to anyone who could give him PROOF of the paranormal. A skeptic, who has proof otherwise. But we shift back and forth from past to present. Why are the siblings estranged? What happened that threw this family out in the night? And what exactly has been haunting Nell? (The answer to THAT one will MESS YOU UP FOR WEEKS).
Each episode takes us deeper into the experience of each character, so we see them at their best and get glimpses of their worst. We move back to moments that we see from one character’s perspective and shift into another’s – deepening our assumptions and morphing them all at once. There is nothing that doesn’t get folded and doubled back upon. You thought you knew Luke. You thought you understood what Theo saw in Nell’s body. You didn’t. You don’t.
Scaring in Sharing
As much as this show is touted as horror, the true horror is how we can treat one another when we don’t take the time to understand. When we try to protect ourselves or our version of the truth or our family’s perception of it, we warp truth and wholeness instead. Sure, there are jump scares a plenty. There are moments when ghosts and ghouls and stranger things appear to wreck you. And yet, it’s the ghosts we expect, the ones we’ve seen time and again, the ghosts who are given pages of dialogue that twist the knife deeper. Yes, we all expected the ghost of Abigail. We just didn’t expect the GHOST OF ABIGAIL.
The Haunting of Hill House is masterful television. It feels like a play, a classic movie and great television series all at once. Go watch it and be grieved.
