“The Haunting of Hill House”

5 episodes in and I’m really loving it so far. Mike Flanagan never disappoints.

Episode 6 was outstanding. What a great show.

The original movie scared the pants off me. The remake with its silly putty ghosts was laughable so I was on the fence about this new version. I just finished the first five episodes and it was slow moving, frightening and frustrating all at once, so of course I have to keep watching.

I'm only halfway through this episode and it is surpassing all the hype I had heard about it. We really are in a golden age of television.

Just finished it. WOW. Stephen King called it "nearly perfect" and he's right.
WOW. I love scary (not gory) movies and MAN this one did not disappoint.

Great fun.

I've watched four episodes so far. It's okay, nowhere near great for me. My complaints? Too much soap opera stuff, not enough horror stuff, the family often annoys me with their moodiness and bitchiness and humorlessness and dysfunction, etc., I don't like the uber-desaturated look of the cinematography, Hill House doesn't have much atmosphere/the production design feels oddly austere, sometimes oddly stagey, and even kind of "puritan" (which is pretty much all the opposite of what I typically like re production design), I often notice the relative absence of a musical score, and I don't care for the constant bouncing back and forth in the timeline. The timeline, the plethora of characters (and multiple actors playing the same character), their similar looks, etc. can be needlessly confusing. There's also kind of a weird disconnect between the stuff that happens in Hill House (during those flashback scenes) and the character reactions and interactions.  And there seemed to be weird gaps in explaining/showing (including the aftermath of) an early "shocking" character death (the death in the present, not the flashback, timeline). There are also too many long "talking head" scenes in general, not enough action overall, although that seemed even more pronounced at the very start.

However, at all of that, I like it enough, or at least it has enough promise, that I'm going to continue watching it. I like the way they changed the story, including the character relationships, I like that every character is a weirdo in some respect--and they're getting weirder as it continues, the soap opera stuff is well done even if there's too much of it for my tastes, and the horror stuff has been fairly well done, occasionally excellent (loved the floating tall guy, for example)--when they finally get around to doing horror stuff.

So a mixed bag for me. By no means great, but worth watching.

See, I hated the original film (aside from the production design), I hated the book, and I loved the 1999 film.  I'm mixed about the series so far.  Different tastes.

I loved the book, and HATED the 1999 film. Different tastes indeed!

Finished watching it already. Final verdict is basically the same. I actually liked it okay, and for me the last couple installments were among the strongest episodes, but overall way too much of a soap opera, too slow, too many long monologues/too many talking head scenes, not enough horror, and I don't like when the horror elements are basically "excused away" (almost apologized for) as a metaphor for soap opera issues. I normally avoid realist drama because that's just not a mode I care for. So I'd rather that my horror films (And SciFi and fantasy and action etc.) not be inundated with realist drama. This kind of was.