The Haunting of Hill House: The horrors of a house

The Haunting of Hill House is a Netflix original series that is adapted from a book under the same name written by Shirley Jackson. The book is considered to be one of the best literary ghost stories published during the 20th century. Apart from the Netflix adaptation, the book was also adapted twice as movies. Once in 1963 and once in 1999. Both films are called The Haunting. While the former is somewhat good, the latter is a disaster.

Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of the novel is sheer brilliance. As cliched as it might sound, this Netflix series gives you a never before experience. This series gave me a different perspective on how a novel could be reimagined. When a novel is adapted into a two-hour film, a lot of details and incidents might go missing. But when it is adapted to a 10-hour series, a lot more can be included.

A lot of horror novels have been adapted to the big screen. And generally, be it adapted or not, most horror films have one common theme. It’s us vs them. The humans vs the ghosts. The films/shows entirely hone into this aspect. The only drama that’s generated is when the ghosts and the humans share the screen. This isn’t the case in The Haunting of Hill House. The drama in this nearly 10-hour retelling of the novel is not only between the ghosts and the humans, but it’s amongst the humans as well. Mike Flanagan has managed to blend family drama and horror and has created something spectacular.

The series is about a family that moves into the old Hill House so that they can repair the house and sell it for a profit. The family isn’t aware of the history of the Hill House. Hugh Crain and Olivia Crain, the parents, have five children. Steve, Shirley, Theodora and the twins Nell and Luke. The series is set in two generations. One when the five children were kids and one when they are adults. Each episode focuses on one character cutting between the past and the present.

One reason why the past and present stories are built parallelly is to juxtapose each character’s childhood and the present life. The traumatic experience they have been through and the impact of it. While the past has bright and saturated colours, the present is sober and desaturated. Another reason could be what the series was trying to convey towards the end. That time and life need not necessarily be linear. It could be random moments falling next to each other like raindrops or snowfall or even confetti. The seamless transitions between the past and the present make it all the more evident.

At present, the Crain family is both broken and disturbed. The relationship dynamics between these characters are sculpted out with great precision. And since we know these characters so well, each time they have an incident with the ghosts, we tend to root for them. Unlike most other horror films where we root for the person and not the character per se, here we root for Luke or Theo or Shirley or any other character. This makes the viewing experience furthermore terrifying.

By the mid-season, when you think you’ve seen it all, the horror intensifies. Again, unlike most other horror films these days, the horror is not generated with dozens of jump-scares in each episode. While there are a few jump-scares, most of the horror that we get to experience is more organic. The kind of horror that you can feel creeping into your body. The kind of horror which you can’t escape by closing your eyes for a second. The kind of horror which could possibly haunt you after each episode.

To conclude, Mike Flanagan has yet again proved that he has mastered the art of making a horror film. The Haunting of Hill House has been sitting on Netflix for close to two years now. With the abundance of content available on Netflix, one could easily miss out on many shows and movies. If you were like me who had missed watching this gem of a show, now is the time to watch it.

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