The Haunting of Hill House
2018
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Oct 5, 2020 · The Haunting of Bly Manor. Nick Allen October 05, 2020. Tweet. It takes approximately 500 minutes for creator Mike Flanagan ’s “The Haunting of Bly Manor” to tell a story that would have been just as effective at 120 or even 150 minutes with fewer characters.
88% Tomatometer 104 Reviews 67% Audience Score 1,000+ Ratings A young governess arrives at Bly Manor and begins to see apparitions haunting the estate. Read More Read Less Watch on Netflix...
- (104)
- Victoria Pedretti
- Mike Flanagan
- October 9, 2020
Netflix's 2018 series The Haunting of Hill House was a gorgeous ghostly journey that arrived at a too-tidy destination. Based loosely on the Shirley Jackson novel, it chronicled the way violence...
The Haunting of Bly Manor review – horror with a chilling lack of shocks. Ear-jangling accents are the most terrifying thing in Mike Flanagan’s follow-up to the supernatural hit Hill...
- Netflix's second chapter in "The Haunting of..." anthology series has great characters, but less scares than Hill House.
- Netflix's The Haunting of Bly Manor: All the Hidden Ghosts Revealed
- What's Your Favorite Anthology Series?
- Verdict
By David Griffin
Updated: Mar 5, 2021 8:45 pm
Posted: Oct 5, 2020 7:01 am
This is a spoiler-free review of The Haunting of Bly Manor, also known as the second season in "The Haunting of..." anthology series, which kicked off with The Haunting of Hill House back in 2018. Once you've watched, read our Bly Manor ending explained interview with Mike Flanagan and the cast, and check out the complicated rules of being a ghost in Bly Manor.
Just in time for Halloween, streaming giant Netflix and series creator Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) have returned with the next chapter in "The Haunting of..." anthology series, titled The Haunting of Bly Manor. While we were disappointed by the lack of scares in Flannagan's retelling of Henry James' 1898 Gothic horror novella, "Turn of the Screw," the series continues to create memorable characters with the help of terrific performances from both new and returning cast members from Hill House in new roles.
The Haunting of Bly Manor, which Flanagan brings forward almost a century for his 1980s England adaptation, centers on Dani (Victoria Pedretti, who played Nell in Hill House), a young American nanny who's hired to look after two orphaned children -- Flora (Amelie Bea Smith) and Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth). Flanagan, who writes and directs the first episode, is effectively able to create a sense of dread and foreboding as soon as Dani first arrives at Bly Manor. He does this in two impactful ways: first, the overall creepy look of the house just screams "Turn back now!" and second, the clever way the lead characters are first introduced makes you suspect there's something not quite right with them.
The siblings, for example, are just plain odd, though both are charmingly portrayed by Smith and Ainsworth. There's Flora, with her incessant use of the phrase, "perfectly splendid" whenever she finds something agreeable, and Miles, with his all-too-knowing grownup demeanor and pissed-off facial expressions, is just unsettling for a child of his age. And then there's Hannah Grose (T'Nia Miller), Bly Manor's housekeeper, who is often seen staring into the distance as if she's lost in a waking dream and needs to be shaken back into reality. Flanagan uses these small oddities in each of his characters in order to create a wonderful sense of mystery about them even before stepping foot in the house.
Once inside, the mystery deepens as Bly Manor slowly develops a fascinating character of its own over the course of the season's nine episodes. There are strange supernatural happenings during the day, but especially at night. However, unlike Hill House in which we saw a terrifying Bent-Neck Lady or a frightening slender man with a bowler hat roam the halls, Bly is less showy with its ghost than its predecessor. Sure, there's a faceless lady in the lake and a sense of impending doom around every corner, but there's really nothing scary that’s jumping out at you or chasing small children down the hall this time around. The lackluster amount of scares is disappointing since Hill House set a high bar with some big scares sprinkled throughout the series.
While I wish Bly Manor raised my adrenaline a bit more at times, Flanagan is loyally following in the footsteps of original author Henry James in this regard. That means it leans into its Gothic horror roots, rather than the more in your face fare we typically see today, including a fair amount in Hill House.
However, although this story is completely separate from Hill House, Flanagan successfully employs some of his best storytelling techniques used in Season 1, like bouncing through time in order to offer more revelatory context and depth to each character. Each backstory is carefully crafted in such a way that, by the end of the series you have a strong sense of why each character made the decisions that they did.
Underneath the horror, Bly Manor is really a love story. And apart from the supernatural oddities happening all around the estate, Flanagan seems more fixated on exploring the complex relational aspects of his characters and finding unsettling elements within them more than telling an effective ghost story. It’s in these dynamic relationships, like the friendship between Hannah and Bly Manor's chef, Owen (Rahul Kohli), where the show has some of its most compelling moments. There's nothing grandiose here, just two people engaged in conversations about life in Paris and a longing for better things. These are very subtle character-building moments here, but Kohli and Miller's chemistry is palpable.
Underneath the horror, Bly Manor is really a love story.
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Netflix's The Haunting of Bly Manor lacks the terrifying punch of its more horror-charged predecessor, The Haunting of Hill House. However, creator and director Mike Flanagan is able to imbue this new chapter with rich character development and a memorable love story. Punctuated by some captivating performances from Henry Thomas and T'Nia Miller, T...
Oct 9, 2020 · Oct 9, 2020, 5:30 AM PDT. Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix. Let’s just get this out of the way: the follow-up to Netflix’s excellent horror series The Haunting of Hill House is nowhere near as scary as...
"The Haunting of Bly Manor" is a masterpiece, that's all I have to say. An outstanding cinematographic work, which brings together a great script, amazing setting and dialogues, excellent actors, remarkable music, beautiful cinematography, and everything else that goes into an intelligent first-class movie.
