The Fall of the House of Usher Flanagan/Netflix Trailer

Anyone watching this?

Watched the first 2 episodes so far, but haven't gone past that. I've been busy and lost the momentum but would like to go back to it. I like the setup, more or less, and would like to see where it goes. It's been good but but great so far.

Each episode is sort of a very broad, very loose, very 'inspired by' adaptation of a Poe story under the banner of a season long narrative about how Roderick Usher's children each died.

The 2nd episode, The Masque of the Red Death, culminates in one of the most grapichally and audibly gross scenes I remember ever being in anything.

Finished this last week. Ultimately I liked it a lot. I didn't think it was gonna stick the landing, but I thought the final episode was good and actually wrapped things up in ways that really all worked and made sense.

I looked at each of the episode titles and was wondering why they'd leave out some of the Poe heavy hitters, but many of the other stories were included via references and plot points threaded throughout the season. I thought it was weird not to have an episode based on The Cask of Amontillado, but I had a feeling throughout when Bruce Greenwood kept going to the basement of their building and staring at a brick wall that it may come into play, and it did very prominently.

It was an interesting approach to refer to all these stories, loosely adapt them, and create an unrelated overarching, season long plot. That element doesn't feel like Poe due to the overtly supernatural aspect of it, but who cares? Why not take that approach? It works well.

Two things stuck out about this series vs the other Flanagan-led Netflix gothic/horror series. The first was that it was the most graphically (and audibly) violent. The end of episode 2 is gross, and there are more sqishy, sinewy, bloody, gross moments throughout the show. I know he was responsible for the the de-gloving in Gerald's Game, but that kind of gore is not typically his thing.

The second is that it's a little more overtly socio-political than others. Obviously there is some commentary in the other shows as well, but this being about a mogul of the pharmaceutical industry and referencing all of the other people that made this evil deal to be successful felt a little more on-the-nose than anything else he's done.

But another year, and another quality gothic/horror series from Mike Flanagan on Netflix. This has been a nice October tradition. I'm sad that it's coming to an end. I know his production company has a deal with Amazon now, but I don't know if there are any plans to continue to do something similar there. If it was going to happen next year I think we'd know that by now.