"The Haunting of Bly Manor" isn't "The Haunting of Hill House," but it's not trying to be
I really loved Mike Flanagan’s 2018 adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix — I thought it was brilliant that he used Shirley Jackson’s novel as inspiration for an entirely new story, and then incorporated small elements of her original book into this new creation. If you’re a Jackson purist this would probably infuriate you (hi, dad, I know you’re reading this), but personally, I thought the series was brilliant. The direction of episode 6, which is presented as just a few very long shots, was amazing, and I loved the overarching story about how both houses and people can be haunted. Also, it was scary as hell. (Though I will admit that the show didn’t quite stick the landing, since its final message seemed to be, “Actually, it’s a GOOD thing this house is haunted!!!!” and that’s just very silly.)
With 2020’s The Haunting of Bly Manor, Flanagan once against takes a seminal piece of horror literature (this time, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw) and uses that as a jumping off point to come up with his own similar-but-different scary story. This one does have a young woman hired to be an au pair to two precocious (and often creepy!!) British children at Bly Manor, and there are certainly ghosts and ghostly possessions occurring, but ultimately Flanagan takes many liberties and is a lot more explicit in his explanations than James was in his novel.
Many Hill House actors return, including Victoria Pedretti, Carla Gugino, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Kate Siegel, but we also get some new faces that bring their own charm to the story — T'Nia Miller and Rahul Kohli especially provide some lovely scenes together beginning about midway through the miniseries.
Is Bly Manor as good as Hill House? I will say that I personally liked Hill House more, but that’s because I like really scary stories — and I will fully admit that although Bly Manor is a bit more slow-going in the beginning, it sticks the ending better than Hill House did. The two shows are telling very different types of stories: Hill House is a ghost story, while Bly Manor is a love story with ghosts in it. Both shows touch on the harm that trauma causes and the harm that holding on to trauma causes, but they do so in different ways. Ultimately, Hill House was super scary but then tried to turn it around into a love story that didn’t quite work, and Bly Manor isn’t very scary but it’s very touching, and its ending fits well with the series as a whole.
It’s impossible to avoid comparisons between the shows given Flanagan’s leadership, the cast, and the source material, but I think these are two different shows that you have to judge on their own merits! Bly Manor is lovely, but if you go into it expecting it to be Hill House all over again, then you’ll likely be disappointed. If you let Hill House be Hill House and Bly Manor be Bly Manor, then you’ll be pleasantly surprised — and yes, sometimes very scared, but that’s all part of the fun.
That’s all for me today, gorgeous! Talk to you soon.
Love,
Kat
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