Table Of Content
(Poe probably wasn’t even an opium addict.) Perhaps that’s because a part of Flanagan would rather be writing his own stories. House of Usher contains many moments of pure, undiluted horror, stylish and masterful. 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.
Film Credits
Samatha Sloyan’s Tamerlane Usher is one of Roderick’s children, who starts a health and wellness company of her own in an attempt to step out of her father’s shadow. Despite being the natural heir to the company, he’s described as the least capable person to take over the business out of all his siblings. Carla Gugino’s Verna is a shape-shifting demon, who made a deal with twins Roderick and Madeline when they were younger. Decades later, she returns at the height of Fortunato’s power to massacre the heirs to the Usher fortune. And this The Fall of the House of Usher trailer shows us exactly why.
Popular Stories
The writers and critics of Poe’s day rejected many of that movement’s core tenets, including its emphasis on the emotions and the experience of the sublime. Accordingly, commentaries on social injustice, morality, and utilitarianism proliferated in the mid-19th century. Poe conceived of his writing as a response to the literary conventions of this period.
References
Some scholars speculated that Poe may have attached special importance to the fact that Roderick and Madeline are twins, noting that Poe previously investigated the phenomenon of the double in “Morella” (1835) and “William Wilson” (1839). Other scholars pointed to the work as an embodiment of Poe’s doctrine of l’art pour l’art (“art for art’s sake”), which held that art needs no moral, political, or didactic justification. At Roderick’s words, the door bursts open, revealing Madeline all in white with blood on her robes. With a moan, she falls on her brother, and, by the time they hit the floor, both Roderick and Madeline are dead. Outside, he looks back just in time to see the house split in two and collapse.
Film
The narrator and Roderick place her in a tomb despite her flushed, lively appearance. In the tale's conclusion, Madeline escapes from the tomb and returns to Roderick, scaring him to death. From his arrival, the narrator notes the family's isolationist tendencies, as well as the cryptic and special connection between Madeline and Roderick, the final living members of the Usher family. Throughout the tale and her varying states of consciousness, Madeline completely ignores the narrator's presence.
Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher lacks the passionate weirdness of Poe
These fill in how the Ushers made their fortune, but they’re kind of a narrative drag. 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. These two Usher arcs are so well-considered and well-executed, however, that they highlight the weaknesses of all the others. It’s as though Flanagan drew a line from Poe’s fabled love of opium to the modern opioid epidemic and ran with a thought experiment without giving too much more thought to the emotional essence of Poe’s work.
Hollywood Loves Hoka: These Are the Brand’s Best Sneakers for Running, Walking and Lounging
This setup allows the show to flit between ongoing references to well-known Poe themes and episodes focused on a specific story. For instance, references to the famous poem “The Raven,” the classic revenge story “The Cask of Amontillado,” and the titular short story occur throughout. This litany of allusions ranges from blatant to coy, clever to annoying. At one point, Roderick’s stone-faced lawyer Pym (a superb Mark Hamill) mentions having a guest for dinner, a reference to the original Poe narrative in which another Pym cannibalizes said guest. One character even bears the name of Poe’s real-world enemy, Rufus Griswold. Flanagan tends to work with a core rotating ensemble of actors, similar to American Horror Story’s anthology approach to recurring casts.
15 Best Horror TV Shows, According to Reddit - Collider
15 Best Horror TV Shows, According to Reddit.
Posted: Sun, 29 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Most of the flashbacks to a young Usher and Dupin are thin, especially compared to the wicked fun on display in the fates of the Usher children. It feels like padding to get episodes to a full hour when Flanagan and company could have leaned even more into the episodic structure that highlights a single Poe per chapter. However, it's an incredibly easy show to enjoy on an episode-by-episode basis, largely because Flanagan’s direction is sharp throughout, including excellent use of music and tight editing—some scenes are too underlit, but that’s just the Netflix brand nowadays, and I’m done fighting it. English majors will likely know where some of the stories are going just by seeing the episode names.
Cast
Loosely based on various works by 19th-century author Edgar Allan Poe (most prominently the eponymous 1840 short story), the series adapts otherwise unrelated stories and characters by Poe into a single nonlinear narrative set from 1953 to 2023. It recounts both the rise to power of Roderick Usher, the powerful CEO of a corrupt pharmaceutical company and his sister Madeline Usher, the firm's genius COO, and the events leading to the deaths of all six of Roderick’s children. It stars an ensemble cast led by Carla Gugino as a mysterious woman plaguing the Ushers, Bruce Greenwood as an elderly Roderick and Mary McDonnell as an elderly Madeline. “The Fall of the House of Usher” updates the work of Edgar Allan Poe for the era of Big Pharma, turning his most famous tales into a sprawling story of the decline of a wealthy American family. It’s “Succession” meets The Tell-Tale Heart, a story of vengeance, power, betrayal, and bloody parts. The eight-episode mini-series reimagines eight of Edgar Allen Poe’s most recognizable tales and features countless references to some of his other works.
As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a hollow metallic reverberation can be heard throughout the house. At first, the narrator ignores the noises, but Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical. Roderick eventually declares that he has been hearing these sounds for days, and that they are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed. There’s not a moment where The Fall of the House of Usher doesn’t shine, whether it’s in the gloss of Louboutins or the pools of blood. From Susan Davis’ costume department to the extensive visual effects team, each crew came together to deliver their absolute A-game. The new entry into the Mike Flanagan pantheon is always firing on all cylinders, and it’s sure to join many a fan’s annual rotation of spooky time traditions.
Of course, we hear the famous refrain “Nevermore” echo through The Fall of the House of Usher‘s trailer and even see a raven. "House of Usher" brings back many familiar faces from Flanagan's past works — including Bruce Greenwood, who played Gerald in "Gerald's Game" and replaced actor Frank Langella as Roderick Usher after Langella was fired due to alleged sexual misconduct. "The Fall of the House of Usher" has a score of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, behind only "The Haunting of Hill House" (93%) and ahead of Flanagan's three other Netflix horror series. Let's take a closer look at what critics and fans are saying about the melancholy House of Usher. If you have been on social media in the last few weeks then you have probably heard about Mike Flanagan’s newest hit, The Fall of the House of Usher. It has been sitting at number one on Netflix’s charts since it was released on October 12, and it is easy to see why.
It feels like every string is being pulled hard, and in the end, the guitar is getting smashed. The amount of blood, gore, and fear we see in the trailer alone is certainly indicative of what’s to come. I finally got around to reading it and I thought it was pretty good (and scary!). Flanagan is known for slow-burn stories that are heavy on emotion, but "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a little different. Contemporary readers and critics interpreted the story as a somewhat sensationalized account of Poe’s supposed madness. (As a recluse, Poe often invited such accusations.) Later scholarship pursued alternative interpretations.
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. Half creative writing project tied to a freshman seminar on Edgar Allan Poe, half horror-filled karmic catharsis, Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher is a bluntly entertaining exercise. It’s easily the most specifically topical of Flanagan’s Netflix minis, fueled by an often palpable anger.
Within a few hours of the narrator’s arrival, Roderick begins to share some of his theories about his family. Much to the narrator’s surprise, Roderick claims that the Usher mansion is sentient and that it exercises some degree of control over its inhabitants. He declares that his illness is the product of “a constitutional and a family evil.” (The narrator later dismisses this as a cognitive symptom of Roderick’s “nervous affection.”) Roderick also reveals that Madeline, his twin sister and sole companion in the house, is gravely ill.
No comments:
Post a Comment