Table Of Content
- Jerry Seinfeld Brings Back Classic 'Seinfeld' Characters, Takes Jab at 'Friends' in Promo for His Pop-Tarts Movie
- Episodes8
- What's your favorite Mike Flanagan project?
- Discover More Horror
- Is it a worthwhile adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s work?
- Dead Space is coming to Xbox Game Pass just in time for Halloween
Presenting vintage Poe stories filtered through Mike Flanagan's deliciously dark lens, The Fall of the House of Usher will get a rise out of horror fans. All eight episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher are streaming now on Netflix. His latest show, The Fall of the House of Usher, brings back many of the familiar players, and revisits many of Flanagan’s pet themes about dysfunctional families and the way we’re all haunted by our pasts.
Jerry Seinfeld Brings Back Classic 'Seinfeld' Characters, Takes Jab at 'Friends' in Promo for His Pop-Tarts Movie
Of course, that tragedy is more for the patriarch than it is for us, and their deaths, while instrumental to the story, aren’t really what it’s about. Though their respective demises come in varying degrees and patterns of awful, almost every member of the House of Usher is despicable in their own way. Imagine watching Succession and seeing each of the series’ miserable players get what they deserve in the most lethal way possible? That’s the type of delicious schadenfreude that The Fall of the House of Usher offers. We watch on as each victim – Usher or otherwise – makes their proverbial bed despite the grace of the literal warnings offered.
Episodes8
But with The Fall of the House of Usher — which is likely the final collaboration between Flanagan and Netflix — the showrunner has created his most ambitious story yet. It’s still the slow-burning human drama fans have come to expect, but this time, it tells a much more complex story that touches on everything from AI to the opioid epidemic, all viewed through the lens of gothic horror. “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.
What's your favorite Mike Flanagan project?
There are familiar character names, directly absorbed plotlines, overt and subtle visual nods. After four series for Netflix, including The Haunting Of Hill House and Midnight Mass, Flanagan has really found his confident groove. He’s as adept as ever at creating a spooky mood, but his storytelling is defter than it’s been before. Past projects have had a bit of sentimentality about them, but Usher doesn’t allow itself huggy endings or nice guys to root for. Instead, it has the harder job of reckoning with apparently irredeemable people, asking what brought them here and how monsters are created. The Ushers may not elicit much sympathy, but they do (mostly) earn some understanding.
Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) to relate the stories of his offspring’s bizarre, horrible ends, and his own litany of awful crimes. Framing the season is Roderick’s post-funeral dialogue with Dupin, who has been summoned by the six-time bereaved pop to the Ushers’ crumbling family home one night. Sitting across from his legal adversary bathed in candlelight, sipping on million-dollar cognac, Roderick agrees to plead guilty to state charges in exchange for someone hearing his confession. Given the original Poe tale, and the fact that we hear Madeline is banging around in the basement, this isn’t going to end happily.
Discover More Horror
It’s also another striking feat of stop-motion animation, with lifelike sets and clothes that practically breathe as the furry characters move. “The House” is an animated anthology with an inspired narrative focus, as it tells the history of one building, across time and species. Written by Enda Walsh and directed by different filmmakers for each one, "The House" hones in on the anxieties that come with a home, whether it’s the control that others have over it, the critters inside the walls, or the attachment that could lead to one's demise. With its rising directors each employing a surreal style, it creates a rich balance of ethereal, existential storytelling with stop-motion animation that’s so detailed and alive you can practically feel it on your fingertips. Flanagan’s latest house of horrors is a work of fiction, one that’s deeply inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The stories all weave together to form the Usher family’s downfall, but some members of the show’s cast have individual chillers they’re partial to.
Review: The Fall of the House of Usher is a gloriously Gothic horror delight - Ars Technica
Review: The Fall of the House of Usher is a gloriously Gothic horror delight.
Posted: Fri, 13 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Classic tales marry with modern commentary in a limited series that delivers at every turn. You’ll scream, you’ll cry, and once it’s over you might just start it all over from the beginning again. In bringing Poe’s fables to the contemporary world, Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher centers on some of today’s greatest evils.
Is it a worthwhile adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s work?
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. Since The Haunting of Hill House debuted in 2018, Mike Flanagan has steadily built up an impressively diverse anthology of limited series on Netflix, with releases coming on a near-annual basis. The intervening years have included a romantic puzzle box, a small-town vampire story, and a collection of teen ghost stories.
The Fall of the House of Usher review: Mike Flanagan’s Poe Cinematic Universe - Vox.com
The Fall of the House of Usher review: Mike Flanagan’s Poe Cinematic Universe.
Posted: Fri, 13 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
We do get some fabulous creative moments, like Flanagan’s gleeful edit of an opening montage that introduces us to all members of the Usher family through witty cross-cuts and overlapping dialogue. If what you came for were eight cycles of impending doom counting down to their garish conclusions, you’re in luck. Flanagan’s ability to weave this story is helped by the fact that he has regulars like Greenwood, Gugino, Thomas and others in prominent roles, and pros like McDonnell and Lumbly joining his family of players. They know what’s required in a show like this and they make the most of what Flanagan gives them. The Fall Of The House Of Usher certainly has the similar dark, foreboding feel of Mike Flanagan’s other Netflix series, like The Haunting Of Hill House and The Haunting Of Bly Manor.
But in one notable way, it’s the first Flanagan project to not feel entirely at home on Netflix, because it would likely play much better as a weekly series than as a binge. Stick a pin in that black birdie, the fatal thread that links Roderick’s rise as head of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals alongside his driven, brilliant sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell), and the violent destruction of his clan. The series unfolds as a string of morality tales in which the sins of the father are visited upon the equally corrupt heads of the offspring.
The streaming giant has moved in recent years to making fewer seasons per series, and frequently canceling shows before they’ve finished telling their respective stories. Flanagan technically doesn’t make an ongoing series, but rather writes and directs various miniseries that tend to feature a lot of the same actors, like Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas, Rahul Kohli, and his wife Kate Siegel. The different projects — including The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass — aren’t always tonally identical, but all fit somewhere along the horror spectrum.
(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. As the series opens, fans are introduced to Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), the graying CEO of Fortunado Industries — a massive pharmaceutical conglomerate with a signature drug that’s equivalent to the highly addictive opioid OxyContin.
