The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix) TV Show

Created by Mike Flanagan (Hush, Oculus, Ouija: Origin of Evil). Out Friday

The Haunting of Hill House: Season One | TV Review | Slant Magazine
5/5 Slant review by Ed Gonzalez. Mild spoilers for something in one of the episodes, but it definitely made me want to check it out more than I did before.

 

Can’t wait

 

I am very excited for this and Apostle.

 

Guess I'll get on this right after Castle Rock

 

anyone start this???

 

Once I finish up Grimm in a few days I’m all over this.

 

Holy cow 5/5 from Slant? That's huge. I didn't realize who the director was either. I was mildly interested before, now I can't wait.

 

Episode 5 Nell's story is fucking tragic :( I think I could've watched another hour or two of she & her husband. They were adorable.
They did an amazing job with the casting.

 

Episode one was good so far

 

Only got to finish episode 3 last night. It was my favorite so far. Theo is the best of the bunch.

 

This is so good.

The Mr. Smiley stuff was tragic.

 

About to start watching this. My wife hates scary, how scary vs family drama is this?

 

It’s a perfect blend of the two so far.

My girlfriend usually refuses to watch horror but she’s giving this a shot because Halloween is coming up.

It’s very creepy but she’s hanging in there through three episodes.

 

First episode was okay, definitely some good mixed in with bad. The change in dad actors was incredibly jarring.

 

Okay, episode 2 was way better. Flashback Dad is the weakest link by far, though.

 

I don't have a problem with the dad.

Hutton is awesome. I think it would be worse to put aging makeup on Henry Thomas.

 

Hutton is fine, Thomas is the issue — he’ll take me out of the scene sometimes.

 

Binged the whole thing this weekend. It has such a strong build-up and then the end is kind of a real big dud with a pretty absurd tonal shift that takes ALL the teeth out of the house despite its stated "mission" still being incomplete.

 

Enjoying this a lot , 3 eps down.

 

I’m on episode 5 and I’m absolutely hooked. Usually not one for scary things but this caught my eye and I’m glad I started it.

 

pretty much this. the finale really put a huge damper on the whole thing. Thought the whole happy ending of each the characters went directly against a lot of the shows themes.[

 

finished episode 5 yesterday. it's so good.

planning to finish this in the next couple days, and then Halloween would be showing locally. what a week.

 

I loved everything about it. You wanted some crazy battle with the house and for it to burn down? That would have been directly against the tone of the rest of the show. The father died, that was one more person the house took, it wasn't completely happy. I didn't expect them something cliche like them trapped in the house forever. It was about them getting through their issues as a family as much as it was about the haunted house.

 

Ep 7 49:20 holy shit, most fucked up sighting of a ghost yet. I thought the first scene was bad enough but she’s in the next scene too.

 

Sorry in advance for the massive spoiler tag.

I just felt like there were too many unearned and unsubstantiated twists and leaps at the end. Among them: 1) The house is "the most dangerous" for Steven out of all of the surviving kids according to Hugh, but is Steven's life ever even actually threatened back inside the house? An apparently harmless ghost gets in his face, the house gives him a spooky vision, and then he gets to leave. 2) Meanwhile, um, how does Luke get to "opt out" of death when he has injected himself with rat poison, exactly? It takes him a minute or two to fully process what has happened and to decide not to "stay" dead, and then he's allowed to strong-arm his way back into life, despite the fact that Nell realized immediately that death was a terrible mistake and wasn't given the slightest chance to opt out of it. The house killed them both but one of them got to say no thanks? 3) Hugh's face crumbles into pieces in the hallway. He's alone. There's nobody else there to see this vision, or fake-out, or whatever it is. But nevermind, he's fine. It never happened. 4) The family is an unfinished meal to the house, but once Hugh chooses to die, it gives up its hold on the surviving family members? Do the ghosts no longer follow them around outside the house? Does ghost-Nell give up her hauntings? Theo just gets to ignore her crippling touch sensitivity/psychic powers from now on as if it was psychological all along, contradicting what the whole rest of the series repeatedly emphasized, that it wasn't just in their heads? 5) The Dudleys are content to let their daughter wander through Hill House for eternity despite the fact that the woman who fed their daughter rat poison is also wandering there for eternity, and they aren't even mad about it? They actually beg for this to be allowed? 6) Sorry, but, again, Luke injected rat poison into his veins. I don't want his character to be dead, but if the writers chose to have an actual syringe of actual rat poison hanging out of his actual arm... he should be actually dead.

I'll try to rewatch the last episode soon and see if I've missed some things or if I'm being too harsh, but right now, these just feel like plot holes a mile wide from a show that had previously been painstakingly careful and intentional about the smallest details.