Netflix really hedged its bets with this year's Halloween fare, with plans to drop everything from Daredevil Season 3 to Sabrina in a matter of weeks – including a modern interpretation of Shirley Jackson's horror novel The Haunting of Hill House.
At once veering away any prior adaptation of Jackson's novel and paying tribute to staples of the horror genre, Hill House is an addictive slow burn of a binge that will have you biting your blanket in fear and tiptoeing in the dark. Yet even with all the ghostly frills of a horror classic, what stands out about Hill House is the haunting family drama at its center, and the questions of how the characters can escape the literal and figurative ghosts in their past.
Hill House tells the story of one family's disturbing summer at Hill House and its reverberating repercussions on them decades later. Though they only spent several weeks there, Hill House continues to haunt the children as adults, because of the unexplainable experiences they had there and their mother's sudden death on the last night.
The series sucks you in with a promising mix of terror and trauma, investing as much in the relationships of the Crain siblings as children and adults as it does in the shadows and noises that set our teeth on edge. In moments it feels like This Is Us with paranormal trauma, all somber and quiet until something unexpected – though in this case, more terror than tears.
But when I say Hill House hooks you, it hooks you. At 10 episodes, it's a standard season binge for Netflix, as gripping as Stranger Things' inaugural outing because you can't fight the need to piece this story together. Each episode focuses on a different character – flashing between that fateful summer and the present day – allowing us to piece together Hill House's many mysteries Rashomon-style, often seeing the same scene from different points of view or with new information.
'Get in the corr' - Jack Pearson, probably
Image: Steve Dietl/Netflix
The Crains are cast particularly well, looking enough like siblings or like their younger/older counterparts to truly embed you in this family. Standouts include Violet McGraw and Julian Hillard as the young twins, Victoria Pedretti as the tortured baby sibling as an adult, and Kate Siegel's rough but intoxicating adult Theodora. Carla Gugino plays mother Olivia as something of a manic-pixie-dream-mom – ethereally beautiful and kind, crystallized in the memories of her grieving children.
Most horror films and TV build on the mystery; you accumulate knowledge of the monster, what it looks like and what it can do, all of which make it clearer and sometimes less of a threat. In Hill House, you might spend more time clenched up and anticipating a scream then you will spend actually screaming. You'll rarely experience the same scare twice; sometimes it's a floating giant, a rotting corpse, a loud noise, a vivid dream. Even more unlikely is an explanation of what it was or why it happened. As a result, these uncanny images linger long after you turn off the show.
Perhaps as homage to the stage version, Hill House is filmed with immense theatricality. Modern horror often opts for quick cuts and shaky cams, but this is filmed with steady cameras, long takes, and slow zooms, used to hypnotic effect. One episode has a single take that lasts no less than 17 minutes, and it's almost completely devoid of any ghosts or scares as the adult Crain siblings and their father let loose emotionally.
Elizabeth Reaser and Michiel Huisman as elder siblings Shirley and Steve Crain.
Image: Steve Dietl/Netflix
Watching this broken family unleash their inner demons elicits a reaction very different from anything else on Hill House. It's the culmination of a tension built throughout the show, which is otherwise tricky to identify beneath our surface-level fear of ghosts and ghouls.
Similarly, the family refuses to face their deeper issues by blaming it on the spooky stuff. Hugh Crain (Timothy Hutton) never explains his suspicions to the children. The elder siblings (Elizabeth Reaser and Michiel Huisman) fully embrace denial in a desperate quest for normalcy, while the adult twins (Pedretti and Oliver Jackson-Cohen) spend decades trying – and usually failing – to escape the things they saw and experienced at the house.
It's hard to say more about Hill House without spoilers. If you're a viewer who likes their horror with detailed explanations, concrete answers, and explicit rules, then perhaps this house is not your destination. The show is a constant interplay of time, trauma, and secrets, with the house's nebulous powers as a backdrop and anchor for it all.
This is as much about paranormal ghosts as it is about ghosts like addiction, guilt, and regret. It's about the feeling of becoming a ghost in one's own home, as each of the children and their mother do at some point as the house strengthens its hold on them. If you do love a good twist and a scare, if you can afford to shed a few tears for this fictitious family, then come on down. The door is unlocked.
The Haunting of Hill House is now streaming on Netflix.
