The Haunting: Season One (Review)

The Haunting of Hill House
Season One
Netflix 2018
The Nicsperiment Score: 9/10

House-flipper, Hugh Crain, thinks he's found the bargain of a life time. Hill House is a classically designed mansion, and Crain's able to pick it up on the cheap, move in with his wife and four children, and begin an idyllic summer of repair work before he sells the house for big bucks. Matriarch, Olivia, has already designed a new house for the family to build once they bank that Hill House cash. However, the summer isn't idyllic. Before it's over, Olivia is dead, and the five surviving Crains have been terrified out of their minds.
The Haunting's first season, titled The Haunting of Hill House," as each season will apparently center upon a different haunting, focuses upon the now adult Crain children, with flashbacks to just whatever it is that actually happened 26 years before. The show is edited in an almost Pulp Fiction fashion--events are shown out of order, which due to excellent plotting and pacing, only heighten their impact. The show fleshes out the children as youngsters and adults, and explores their relationships with one another, and their now estranged father, as well as their past relationships with their troubled mother. Along the way, the show explores one of the same topics of the classic Shirley Jackson novel upon which it is based, "Is Hill House really haunted, or are these people crazy?"
I don't want to spoil any of the plot's elements, but will say that the cast members, both young and old, are excellent in their roles. Their dialogue is raw and real. The Haunting's cinematography and direction are also absolutely impeccable. Every frame and camera movement seems chosen meticulously, and looks as if it was agonized over. The show also balances several elements of horror deftly. It builds upon the terror present in the book with a sense of mounting dread. It deals with the psychological, as characters' thoughts and emotions, as well as those of the viewer, are relentlessly preyed upon. It deals out several all-time great jump scenes, including two that startled me as badly as Ben Gardner's rotting head popping out of that boat hole in Jaws did back when I was a kid. However, the greatest addition to cinematic horror The Haunting's first season brings to the table, and indeed this ten-hour Netflix series is as cinematic as any horror film ever shot, is the sheer amount of terrifying ghosts hidden and not-so-hidden in its tableau. The Haunting's make-up crew have done a great job with all the rotting flesh and white pupils, but many times, they've done this incredible work for a ghost in the distant background, often secretly gazing out our protagonists from between a banister, or from a distant door frame. Many of these, along with some subtle work in the show's audio design, are only picked up by the viewer's subconscious, creating a growing feeling of discomfort and wrongness that has seldom been matched in the genre.
In fact, for the majority of its run, The Haunting's first season is absolutely flawless in its construction, only faltering in the end when the character of Hill House suddenly goes from a manifestation of pure malice to...something not that. Yes, Hill House is as big a character here as the human leads, and I expect just as much cohesion in its characterization as I do with the people it is terrifying. Other than this late-game misstep, there is nothing to dissuade the expectant viewer other than "don't watch this if you hate being frightened."
After the Great Famine in mid-1800's Ireland, one of my ancestors sailed across the Atlantic to New Orleans, Louisiana, and made a fortune in the grocery business. After the Civil War, he moved to an extremely rural area in the central part of the state, and bought the home of a deposed plantation owner. He completely remodeled the house, adding many extra rooms for his growing family, and christened it Glynnwood. Eventually, over several generations, after many Glynn descendants lived their last moments within Glynnwood's walls, one side of the family inherited the home and land immediately around it, and the other only the land immediately around that land. I come from the latter. The former, while still owning the house, all moved away to larger cities to become engineers, lawyers, and performers of other jobs you do in a city, excepting my great aunt, leaving the latter side to work all of the land alone as farmers. Growing up, I could always see that house from my yard, except when the sugar cane was too tall. Thankfully, especially when my great aunt was still alive, I got to make frequent visits to Glynnwood. One time, when I was about eight, I walked over with my slightly younger cousin and my little sister. The three of us greeted my great aunt, who was busy with something in her bedroom, and told us to go play. We ended up across the house in what was known as the Green Room, named so because...well, you can guess why--green walls, green floor, green sheets. Full of youthful energy, the three of us bounded up upon the empty bed and jumped up and down. Suddenly, the sheets flew forward, and an old man wearing a red-and-white striped sleeping cap sat up, and with ever-widening eyes, inhaled (yes, inhaled) a scream. The three of us ran in terror, all the way back to my aunt's room.
"We're sorry, we're sorry," we said breathlessly.
"Whatforever why?" she asked.
"The man staying at your house. We jumped on the bed and woke him up! We're sorry!"
"Why, children," she said. "There's nobody staying here but me."
"No, Aunt Emma," we all said. "There's a man. We woke him up. We were jumping on the bed."
"Well, you should never jump on the beds in any of the rooms, but there isn't anybody here but me and you three children."
Confused, we slowly worked up the courage to go back to the green room. Being the oldest, and perhaps that day the bravest, I was the first to look through the door as we slowly nudged it open. Finally, the three of us crept in, and settled into shock. The bed was as perfectly made as when we first entered the room a few minutes before...and completely and totally absent a soul.
I've had an affinity for ghost stories ever since.