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The Haunting of Hill House: Extended Director's Cut
Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:
Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:
From everything that I had been hearing over the last few years, The Haunting of Hill House was one of those horror shows that you HAD to see. Kind of like Stranger Things it has garnered tons of praise for it’s run time, 6 Saturn awards, massively popular reviews on rotten tomatoes, and pretty much every person I talked to who had seen it was babbling how good it was. Unlike Stranger Things, The Haunting of Hill House doesn’t lend itself to binge watching nearly as much. While I binged the show in 2 days straight, this is a show that really allows the viewer to sit back and think about what’s going on, and the slow burn pacing is much more conducive to watching one to two episodes a night rather than in 4+ hour chunks.
Before you wonder why there’s no “season one” in the title, I’ll explain. The show was originally struck as a one off miniseries for Netflix but has been renewed for a second season (titled The Haunting of Bly Manor), meaning that each season will be it’s own self contained story, and is more of an anthology series ala American Horror Story more than anything. Either way, the show is utterly fantastic! We start out with the introduction to our main characters. The Crain children, Steven (Paxton Singleton), Luke (Julian Hilliard), Shirley (Lulu Wilson), Nell (Violet McGraw) and Theo (McKenna Grace) are all growing up in Hill House, a huge palatial manor that their parents are trying to flip in order to build their dream house. The thing is, they all believe it’s haunted, with the different children having their own supernatural experiences in the house. These “experiences” form the very foundation of who they will become, with each of the children growing up with various forms of baggage from their time growing up there. For some they have grown into careers, while others suffer from drug abuse, psychological issues, and a resounding fear of where they came from. When Nell dies, the 4 remaining children are forced to come back to the house that they ran away from decades ago and face their own demons.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the series is how director Michael Flanagan interweaves the realities of living in a haunted house, and the realities of just growing up in general into the sense of terror. Many of the things that befell (befall) the Crain children could happen to anyone, while other baggage inducing incidents are born straight from the spiritual realm itself, making the audience wonder how much of this is real and how much of this is something that they built up in their heard. Luckily the 10 episode show delves into each and every one of these terrible incidents, building on them in the present time as well as switching back and forth to the past. In fact, time jumps are one of the biggest aspects of the show, as you’re literally pulled back into the 1990s for their childhood events, and then catapulted into the future to see how they’ve adapted and changed as a result of these horrible experiences.
The reality of the situation is that the horror and the scares are NOT the primary focus of the show, even though this IS a horror show. It’s more of a matter of what those scares mean to the psyche of the 5 Crain children, and how those horrible moments shape and change them into the people they are today, and the long term psychological effects that they manifest in them. As such the horror and the scary demonic visitations are not there to scare you in and of themselves, but rather be the inciting incidents for the trauma that comes later. Yet at the same time those scares are just as creepy, just as terrifying and just as mesmerizing as if they were meant to BE the focus, if you know what I mean. I said the show was really a hybrid of character study and Gothic horror, and the two are so intimately intertwined that trying to separate one from the other is night impossible.
Rating:
Rated TV-MA by the MPAA
Video:
Audio:
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Extras:
• Extended Episode with Commentary For "Steven Sees a Ghost:" Director Mike Flanagan.
Disc Two:
• Extended Episode with Commentary For "The Bent-Neck Lady:" Director Mike Flanagan.
• Audio Commentary: For "Two Storms:"
Disc Three:
• Extended Episode with Commentary For "Silence Lay Steadily:"
Final Score:
The Haunting of Hill House is a completely fresh and exciting looking on TV horror. Instead of just scaring us with the typical jump scares and frights, the show carefully crafts a psychological layer of terror over the whole thing, complete with in depth character studies and some of the most impressive Gothic looking horror visuals I’ve ever seen. The show is captivating and doesn’t waste any of the 10 episodes at its disposal, giving us a slow burn terror buildup that literally had me begging for more by the time the last episode ended. With season 2 confirmed I can only tingle in anticipation of more of this incredible show, and with the great audio and video specs don’t hesitate to give it two thumbs up for Gothic horror fans everywhere.
Technical Specifications:
Starring: Henry Thomas, Kate Siegel, Carla Gugino, Elizabeth Reaser, Mckenna Grace, Timothy Hutton, Lulu Wilson, Victoria Pedretti
Directed by: Mike Flanagan
Created by: Mike Flanagan, Shirley Jackson, Meredith Averill
Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1 AVC
Audio: English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, English
Studio: Paramount
Rated: TV-MA
Runtime: 569 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: October 15, 2019
Recommendation: Great Watch
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