The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix Original Series) – Redefining Ghost Stories.

The Haunting of Hill house. A truly spectacular staple of horror for a time when so many say that horror is becoming “stale”, or overly “troped up” until there’s no more horror left to experience, but not for this show though. The Haunting of hill house, or as I will be referring to the show for the rest of the article, Hill House, left me wondering as I moved from my couch to my bed, “How can someone make anything better”. With an artistic screenplay and beautiful cinematography to back up the chilling horror that lies within the characters minds and walls of Hill House, how could you expect to sleep soundly without having images of Poppy Hill or The Bent Neck Lady dancing in your mind. But this is just the start, so let’s get to it.

Hill House revolves around the Crain Family as they desperately dodge the endless slew of scares and trepidations that try to send the family six feet under. The show jumps back and forth in time to when the family lived in Hill House, and to when the children in the family are adults. The family being Olivia Crain (Carla Gugino), Hugh Crain (Henry Thomas/Timothy Hutton), Nell C. (Victoria Pedretti/Violet Mcgraw), Luke C. (Oliver Jackson-Cohen/Julian Hilliard), Theo C. (Kate Siegel/Mckenna Grace), Steve C. (Michael Huisman/Paxton Singleton), and Shirley C. (Elizabeth Reaser/Lulu Wilson).

As a lover of well done special effects, this show is filled with a good handful of realistic gore. Please note for people who get uncomfortable by an overload of gore, the special effects used in the show are used in a way that makes it seamlessly become part of the narrative. Noteworthy examples are a cut on the hand that was dealt to the Hugh Crain (Henry Thomas), a certain character who will not be mentioned for spoiler reason is hung by their neck snapping it, and face makeup done on the ghost of Poppy Hill to make her look worn and molded like the house she resides in.

The number one thing that I was blown away by in this digital production was its screenplay. Good writing for me is very important and this show delivers with a beautiful multitude of differences in dialogue to boost the characters. The contrast between the dialogue of the characters who are alive and the twisted ghosts of Hill House. The grown up children speak as normal, slightly less than middle aged adults who deal with the stress of life, and the ghosts, who speak as if Shakespeare guides their mouths to say artistry morbid things that would send shivers down even the most strongly of willeds backs.

In conclusion if you are interested in revamping your love for ghost based horror spectaculathon, then The Haunting of Hill House is the right show for you. By far this is a horror revelation for Netflix and with a next season coming with a new set of characters October 9th, I cannot wait to see what “The haunting” series has in store for us next at Bly Manor.