I feel like, in the latest series, the reason Nell was able to forgive her siblings as soon as she saw them has to do with what she says about time - as one of the dead in Hill House, she's not experiencing time linearly. She's bouncing around the timeline, seeing past and future and present, and - given that she's been haunting both herself and her siblings - she can see moments outside of the house, too. Ironically, she's probably had more time and space to come to terms with things after death than she ever did while alive. Nell is, in some sense, the oldest and wisest out of all of them now; she also has the perspective that death (your own or someone else's) can give you - that some of the problems you find so important actually aren't. That love and forgiveness can be so, so powerful and healing, and that letting your loved ones know that they're important to you is wayyyy better than winning an argument that, chances are, you'll forget the cause of in a few decades.
this!!! also, i didn't get the impression that she had forgiven the house or was romanticizing it in her final scenes, she even said the line that she felt like a small creature trapped in the belly of a monster. her face alone in that scene conveyed her feelings towards it. she was just focusing on getting her siblings out alive and getting to say goodbye, she wouldn't have wanted to speak too much about the house and lead them to forever worrying and being haunted by her eternity there.
Heads up for anyone watching; first two parts are spooky and fun, last third is pretty terrible. Also, made by Stephen King and focuses a little too hard on the autistic-child-psychic stuff
For me, Nell's choice was she wanted freedom from the pain and loneliness more than she wanted the apology. Hill House is a great setting for that kind of turnaround: either be haunted for eternity or move forward. She was a real Gothic heroine in that scene, all delicate sensibility and affectionate heart in a wretched moment. It was giving Brontë.
She gave her youth to her mother’s companion. Her mother never thought her daughter needed a life of her own. When her mother died she had nothing because she was never allowed to even know that she could. Her sister who had a life thought that her sister would be fine but she never thought to ask. The main character has a problem that no one ever thinks of. She was raised as a companion. She has no friends of her own. She doesn’t know how to make friends her own age because she was never around people her age. The place where she lives is taking from her, the car that she helped to pay for has been taken from her. She is alone. She has no one. When she tries to make friends they don’t want her. This is the horror. An unwanted woman with no idea how to deal with life. Not ghost. You have no husband no children so you dont get to keep the house that you’re living in. The house that you have been paying bills for. They have children, that you have been taking care of while they live like they haven’t got any responsibilities. Most people don’t get the real horror of this story so they make the ghosts real. The horror is of a life and body wasted while being told that you must wait for them to sow their wild oats of finish school. When they are done you’re told to start your life. You have no friends no romantic possibilities because you’ve never learned to make them. I wish people would stop trying to make movies about this book. You don’t get it so you add tropes from scary stories. The childless aunt that raised everyone else’s children but ends up alone in the rest home is the horror.
I tried to watch a video of a professor pontificating about the book but i couldn't do it. He had no idea what he was talking about. It's really hard to find actual, competent analysis in video/audio form (i drive for work)
Even throughout the book, Eleanor is essentially trying to play a part: her inner monologue is often at odds with her dialogue to others. She seems to be play-acting and trying to emphasizing that she belongs and that she has friends: it's just as much that when she feels like she is there and everyone else is in on jokes, she is left out and a step or two behind.
Ms. Jackson knew psychology that had not even been discovered yet. I understand Nell, she’s suffered cptsd from her narcissistic mother and sister. She had trouble relating to people due to her isolation, paranoid, she was passively suicidal ( sleeping on her left side to wear out her heart) , and she was a maladaptive daydreamer. Brilliantly done.
I have a soft spot for the 1999 adaptation, 'cause I watched it as a kid and my little queer self from back then was fascinated by the relationship between Zeta-Jones' Theodora and Taylor's Nell. I still love their performances.
The book is wonderful. Truly a great ghost story. As for the play, a high you couldn't find footage of, I had the role of Eleanor in a community theatre production in the nineties. Maybe not high art, but we had a blast, and so did our audience ❤😂
@@grimmelleHi, this is Julia. I sent you a reply, but I don't think it went through, so I am rewriting it. I see that you are interested in that production of The Haunting of Hill House that was in thirty plus years ago. I Eleanor. The production was at Mountain Community Theatre in Ben Lomond CA, which is in the Santa Cruz mountains, just about 20 minutes from the city. It was a very good production. I think the script was pretty true to the book and the sixties version of the film. There was an added character in the play. Mrs Montague, wife of Dr Montague, who is a medium and disagrees with her husband's scientific methods. The ending is true to the novel, Eleanor decides to "stay" with the house. I remember the set was beautiful. The guy who designed it was a real artist. Very Gothic with dark wood and evil looking 👼 😮 wish I could say I still have pictures of it, but I don't. It was video taped, it I don't remember getting a copy. Too bad, it would be surreal to see it thirty plus years later 😂 Thanks for bring back such fun memories ❤
I actually loved Liv in The Haunting of Hill House. I don't think her fears and stuff was 'women be crazy bout children', it actually felt very raw and real, the depiction of the many horrors and terrible nightmares a mother might have about her children's lifes and futures. It of course is exaggerated beyond insanity, but the base is there and although i'm not a mother i can definetly see how horrofying the thought of your own children dying before you can be for a mum. I also loved it in general, and i find most criticisms people have are either subjective or nitpicky. One thing i didn't like was how many monologues there are because Flannagan loves a long monologue speech, and sometimes they can drag on, but overall the show is pretty solid. I have seen people nitpick it a lot tho, even criticising the acting of the children which like ??? Damn, but the monologuing is a critique i can definetly see and accept bc it can make the show feel a little slow at times.
My thoughts on the many monologues and slowing down the show is that they were overdone in Midnight Mass, especially the monologues performed by Kate Siegel's character Erin. I honestly fast forward through some of them, mostly the conversation between Erin and Riley about death. I now expect Kate to get a lot of monologues in all of Flanagan's work since that's his wife and she is an fantastic actress.
I can help with historical context! : The conversation about the picnic and the bull isn't actually changing subjects. They're riffing off of stereotypes about picnics and common elements in funny stories. Like that ants always show up at picnics (we still have that trope). And there are lots of old funny stories about people going on picnics and ending up crossing a field where a bull was, and getting chased by the bull. The bit with the comic uncle is an element that shows up in a lot of funny stories, too. So basically they're just joking around about the kinds of funny stories that get passed down in families: "Hey, (ha ha ha) remember that time we went for a picnic, and we were WARNED not to go into the field with the bull in it. But Uncle Harry - you know Uncle Harry, he was also funny - Well, Uncle Harry decided the bull wasn't dangerous. And--" Like that. It's just based on story tropes from the period. // The ghost-hunting stuff: Ghost-hunting was actually really popular as early as the Victorian era, when Spiritualism became a big trend: seances and ghost-rapping and stuff. Planchettes were used for "spirit writing" in the Victorian era, and later with ouija boards, which were invented in the 1890s and became really popular in WWI (because so many people had died in the war, and people wanted to contact them). // You could absolutely die in carriage accidents! A runaway horse can go 25 to 35 mph, and carriages were narrow and top-heavy (like Jeeps lol) so they tipped over pretty easily. There were also no safety devices in carriages of course, so you could easily get thrown from one and break your neck.
Thank you! I was gonna mention these but you beat me to them 😂 maybe not the small talk back in the day because I’m not a ghost but for sure the spiritualism and surprisingly deadly carriages
About Poppy Hill, it's interesting how the House seems to pick a specific "avatar" for the different generations. Poppy Hill selected Olivia to become part of the house, and then Olivia goes along to be the "face" of Hill House to cause more people to die there. Poppy doesn't really show up again except in background shots after Olivia dies.
Poppy literally knocks all the kids out when they go back to the house, and then recites a long nursery rhyme (or retelling of her family’s deaths/murders?) to Hugh.
With the poltergeist and nell the implication is, that she herself is the source of the haunting. Thats why Theos room got destroyed when nell was angry with her. It a common thing in ghosthunting to look at the dynamic in a house and often it gets attributed to a depressed unhappy girl or woman, its really interesting, not a ghost in the usuall sense but like supernatural DID
Steve in the Netflix show is almost certainly named after Steven King, Haunting of Hill House super fan and horror novelist. He's also responsible for the mini-series Rose Red which is basically his love letter to Hill House. Also Nell's therapist is the same actor who played Luke in the the original Haunting movie.
I always thought that the slight difference in the closing was interesting - the novel closes with "whatever walks there, walks alone." The series ends with "And those who walk there, walk together."
i'd like to add that i've also had a terrible year (like you said, im only 26, so theres plenty of room for worse) that's left me barely a ghost of what i was. For months i would lay in bed looking at my wall and think that i was no different to a ghost haunting my room. When I got to the conclusion of your video, it really made me start crying. I feel oddly hopeful now, thank you.
I really liked the Haunting 1999 when it came out, I was 12, so excuse my bad taste but some of the scene were memorable, like the piano string. That scene has haunted me (pun intended) for years.
I watched it when I was 12 too and it made me love the horror genre. 20 years later I watched it with my niece and she loved it. And I still love it too! Such a lovely movie, I don't understand why it gets so much hate 😢
Took me over half the Analysis of "The Haunting" to realise that this was the first horror movie I've ever seen! I never knew it was based on Hill House, what a weird experience
I had a thought about why 1999 Hill House looks the way it does; some rich pedo who stole children from his factory mills, murdered them, and burned them in the fireplace wouldn't build a house to home a family. Just some estate that screams 'look at my vast wealth!' Just empty, vast, and hallow. Now the house set in the 1963 movie does look like a house built for a family, a rich family yes, but that wealth and homely feel hides the hidden sinister.
It's been a long time so maybe I'm mis-remembering but I think it said for the 1999 version that Hugh Crane hunted the children & added on to the house for that purpose. I know his ghost definitely hunts the children's ghosts but I thought the implication was that it was a continuation of some creepy hide & seek murder-game he played with his victims in life.
i clicked on this vid expecting a simple analysis and got so much more i agree with your point alot that the show could've stood for itself cause if i'd known about the original book before, i might not have appreciated the show for what it is. i relate a lot to nell's character, and the ending of this vid really spoke to me ❤️ also there’s a theory that the final scene’s red hints mean they’re still in the red room, but like you said, everyone deserves a happy ending, so i wanna believe they got theirs it would be too cruel if they didnt 🥲
@@grimmelle Did you know Midnight Mass is a easter egg in Mike Flanagans movie Hush? The main character is the author of the book and you might recognize the main character as the actress who plays Erin Greene. Also her neighbor is played by Bev Keane.
Loved the breakdown of the book and older adaptations put several missed points about Luke's timeline of drug abuse and a couple other nuances make me think maybe you should watch the series again😅
Thank you for your words on mental health. Really not what i expected when i clicked on this video, but great to hear. And best of all it was one of your best videos so far imo regardless of that.
1:01:12 as someone who was already a fan of the book and 1963 adaptation, I completely agree. I've always thought that if the show had a different name and gave the characters different names, I probably wouldn't have realised it was based on the book at all. I would have enjoyed it so much more if it was just its own thing because i kept comparing it to the book in my head the whole time It's definitely a strong enough story to stand on its own, so I don't get why it had to be an adaptation Anyway, I really enjoyed this video! I absolutely love Jackson's works, especially Hill House and you did some great analysis! 😊
The Haunting 1999 was the first horror film i ever saw, and it made me fall in love with the genre. I was 12. Years later, it was the first scary movie i watched with my niece, and of course, we made fun of the entire movie, but we created a bond between us , cause she's almost the same age I was when I first watcjed it. Now, we have our own little tradition of watching creepy movies/series. This movie will always be important to me, no matter how much hate it gets. I love it for personal reasons ❤
I had the 1999 one on dvd as a kid/teen. It took me so long to realise after watching the series that it had the same source material. It's so campy. And I love it.
I really like this summarization! This video does a great job contrasting the different plots of The Haunting of Hill House adaptions, and I think is really insightful to the development of the haunting horror genre over time. One thing I will say about The Haunting of Hill House Flanagan adaption is that the haunting for each character is symbolic of their grief. There's been a lot of chatter about how each character represents the different stages of grief, but it is also a little deeper than that. Steve relives his grief over and over. It's public, he made a profit off of it, and is constantly reminded of it, enough that he doesn't even recognize that it is grief. He is haunted by the fact he can't explain it, even when he tried. Shirley is haunted by mourning. She's never moved past it, I mean she literally lives in a funeral home. She keeps a model of her mom's forever house on the table. She insists on taking care of Nell's body because that is the only way she knows how to mourn. Her grief never moved past her mom's funeral, which is why she's so pissed at Steve. Theo is haunted by the trauma of the incident. She's watched her family deal with the trauma poorly, she is empathic and feels the trauma of people and objects intimately. She associates emotions with pain, which is why she struggles with emotional intimacy and vulnerability (see the rock wall monologue). Even as a child psychologist, she's very factual about feelings, especially directed at adults. Luke is haunted by what he saw. As you noted, he saw a lot of different things and was never believed. The monologue at the beginning of his episode by the guy who tore out his own eyes is meant to really emphasize sight in his episode, and that dulling your senses with drugs doesn't actually block that out. Luke has trouble bringing up his past and his ghosts, and they literally follow him - coalescing in the fact that it took a long time for him to really understand what happened to his mom (which is one reason the hatman turned into her). He also craves connection, which I think is why he had the friend at rehab, but because he's been blinded by his past he can't see the danger signs and is abandoned again. There's also the poison comparison with drugs and the rat poison that is especially notable. Nell is haunted by the feelings of Hill House. She's depressed and manic, and the twist of her story really finishes that literally. She's haunted by a life she never had and never got to live past. Her future died in that house. You can see the "haunted" themes in the original book as well, and Flanagan has shown he takes a unique approach to adaption that specifically focuses on theme. There is the disconnect of family themes between the series and the book, but otherwise that may be why the Neftlix show has such a compelling use of the material that still feels connected to the source, even with the differences. The other thing that is incredibly important to note is that ghosts and haunting are "real" but also "not real" when they are utilized in the story. Yes, the characters lived in a haunted house, but they are haunted by their experiences there - primarily their mother's death. All the "supernatural experiences" can and should be treated as symbolic and exaggerations of reality. The mom was going crazy because she was starting to realize that her dream of a happy hope was starting to age as her children grew up; she wanted to protect them and keep them young. The Hill's represent the twisted idea of family and a home, and how to "fix" your own problems. Yes, they are real ghosts in the story, but they don't need to take away from the root of the message as long as you treat it as an exaggeration of what they represent.
I am watching this video now and when she questioned the significance of the blind addict's monologue and Luke's rehab lady friend, I got a bit offended like these are real people. lol. Yeah, I was wondering if she had gotten to the end of the series because the "blind" monologue and the girl from rehab do show back up later in the series. Oh and now she describes Theo's monologue ,after Nell's ghost appears in the car, as "long and overacted" and a weird plotline...ma'am??!!! That was an explanation for most of Theo's behavior in her plotline. I love these characters and the series, so maybe I'm being harsh, but I have never heard anyone critique the performances and story this way.
@@itss_nattyjyeah, PTSD is no joke, I was also pretty off-put by that comment. Especially within the context of drug abuse. And yeah! That was Theo finally being emotionally vulnerable! Letting down those thick brick walls. Contrasted with the Hill member who literally bricked himself into the foundation. Like, the parallel is very clear if you pay attention lol
Thank you for your vulnerability near the end. I'm in a similar spot, a little older even, and it feels comforting to hear from other people who are going through the same thing.
The Haunting of Hill house stimming from a book is fascinating and I'm so glad I got to learn about it from you!! The little illustration of you by the candles is so cute and nice touch!
Eleanor has psychic/ telekinetic potential. She came into the house with unhappiness and emotional problems, because the house is alive it overtook her. The house also has the ability to mess with their emotions and make them hallucinate.
I’m so glad that someone put together an analysis of the book and its adaptations! You did a phenomenal job and I appreciate the vulnerability at the end. I think what you’re doing here is meaningful.
I can absolutely acknowledge that the 1999 version is a terrible adaptation of a fabulous story, and is generally a cheesy 90's movie, but my god is it one of my favorite movies.
My favorite part of the TV show was that 17-minute long one-shot at the funeral. Nothing has quite ever topped that episode for me, I’m still completely enraptured every time I go back and watch it
since the part about luke being paid off to not show up at nell's wedding wasn't clarified in the video: its because he showed up high. he was late and he was on something. thats why both shirley and steve told him to leave. some people who haven't watched the series might not know this and think they were just ostracizing him and trying to keep him away from a family event but thats not the case entirely.
Hey! I really liked your video and your wonderfully in-depth analysis of hill house. I also loved the TV show and now I want to read the book!! Thank you again!
(Novel) I love the idea that the relationship b/w Dr. Montague and his wife being a mirrored satirical take on Jackson's irl relationship with her infamously unfaithful husband who was a professor and academic writer. While he supported her work, he also belittled her, especially once she started making more money than him saying essentially that she was an "idiot savant" who needed his touch ups to make her work readable. He also had a brother named Arthur. Mrs. Jackson was also known for putting on a "witchy" persona, although this was believed mostly to be played up to mess with peoples' misconceptions and biases that had formed about her and less of a genuine practice in the occult. So, the idea that this professor who ruins his career based on his shared belief in the supernatural (even though he judges how his wife goes about "proving" it) and has this domineering wife with a manservant who it's implied she's having an affair with show up halfway in the book... It was Jackson's way of "cucking" her husband while also poking fun at herself and the entire nature of their relationship and the dysfunction/horror of it all. Also, having been someone who has struggled in the past with intense mental illness similar to Mrs. Jackson's and Eleanor's, when you impose yourself on people in the way that is depicted in the book, people tend to avoid confronting it head on and will instead opt for either ignoring it or by dropping hints in hopes that you will pick them up and take action yourself, relieving them of any responsibility. The multiple times the other guests suggest that Eleanor should leave, they are hoping she will either leave or take the hint that they are suggesting she should leave and "snap out of it". Then, when these social cues that typically work for others continue to fail, in societies where we are not taught how to properly manage these behaviors in ourselves or others/loved ones we typically revert back to when we last saw these types of "social faux pas" so aggressively and commonly transgressed - childhood. Plus, people are taught that avoidance and hints *are* the nice way to tackle these things as adults. So when these fail and adults get frustrated they can fall back to childhood tactics like the ones seen in the woods where they let Nell wander off alone for some "peace" and then react coldly when she gets upset about it. Also, I believe we are meant to see a bit of a parallel between how Eleanor viewed her mother and how the others view her over the course of the stay. This is further proved by the whole "let me live with you Theo" thing she does randomly, which is a cry for help and it's the only thing she knows "I lived with mom and took care of her, my sister isn't much of a sister but *Theo is*". In the context of the book though, we can chalk everything up to being magnified by the House, from Eleanor's psychosis to the cruel apathy/inaction of the others. I've always maintained the scariest homes are haunted by the living, so it makes sense that Mrs. Jackson implied Eleanor to be the source of poltergeist activity long before ever coming to Hill House, suggesting the House to merely amplify what is already there.
(Netflix series) I think this series is great because it essentially says what if instead of a group of strangers it's a family? Then examines the ways that a family estranges one another and gives up, which is a much more difficult process for a lot of people to tackle than a group of relative strangers ousting another stranger like shown in the novel. I feel that the book examined the ways that societal expectations shape our inter-personal relationships, the show took a more direct approach of examining how they shape our familial ties. Inspired adaptation is more fitting imo, like you said but I'm glad it's getting Shirley Jackson's work to a new modern audience like myself lol Great video!
"One man built this in the 1800s, why are things moving?!" 🤣🤣🤣 (Damn, but I'd inadvisably sign up to chill in a haunted house for $900 a week, are you kidding!?! In *this* economy? The US dollar goes a long way where I'm from, baby 🤭)
Okay I was obsessed with the 99 movie as a kid because I loved the big huge house. That being said it does address some of your comments. Hugh Crane built the house so big and confusing so the kids would/could play hide and seek with him. The doctor character does go to investigate the fireplace but it has been jammed closed and he cannot open it. And I always took the dad dying at the end of the miniseries as him trading himself for the kid's safety.
Hugh Crane didn't want to get Nel ghost-pregnant in the 1999 version, he's her grandfather or great-grandfather. She got a vision of the preggo belly when she was putting together that she felt so drawn to Hill House because Crane's missing second wife realized he was serial murdering the townfolk's children & ran away but discovered she was pregnant after doing so.
Just discovered you channel with this content and THANK YOU!!! lol I saw The Haunting - 1963 and loved it and will always be my favorite. The use of shadows, camera angles and sound to really get to you. I love it. Was excited about the remake, which is unusual for me, I don't normally like updates and the 1999 one was as disappointing as most remakes/updates tend to be. For me, the CGI was just too much and the complete story change as well as the "house" design just didn't do it for me. I've never read the book but now want to, so thank you for that as well. I love how you delve into so much of each and am looking forward to checking out more of your content. As for the show? They could have and should have made it a stand alone show that had nothing to do with the original content it's "based" on. It was good, but not The Haunting. Thanks for this gem.
I appreciate that you called out the difficulty in reading anything from the 2018 series ending, I've had the thought on my watch throughs that it feels kinda conflicted when you try to break it down into anything broader.
Still watching your vid so I may have more comments coming lol First, thanks for doing a video on this, I watched the series and the 99 movie, never knew about the book. As far as the carriage crashing into the tree in the book, killing Mrs. Crain. Horses are extremely sensitive to their surroundings and are easily spooked. A spooked horse takes off running as fast as it can. Unfortunately they can and do run into obvious hazards like a tree in their attempt to flee. So I think what the author, Ms. Jackson, was going for is that the house was never right. There was always something dark there, the horses sensed it and instead of proceeding to the house tried to flee from it but because the house is evil, it doesn't let anyone it wants to escape it.
Oh my gosh, you are back!! Pls talk about some of junji itos other stories i liked uzumaki and the one with the girl tomei i think you are the best storyteller ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ pls
I don't know if anyone has suggested this in the comments already, but you should check out Rose Red. It's a Stephen King miniseries which is VERY Stephen King, but also a not-so-thinly-veiled reimagining or reworking of Hill House.
I had no idea what to xpect when I clicked on this video, but man is this it. Another 2 hour long banger about a piece of media I have no outside interest in damn skippy
i adore Flanagan's adaptation so much that i own it on DVD and it lead me to purchasing the book. this is my comfort media, i even have a tattoo of the door to the red room. im happy you made this video, i liked some of your thoughts.
This is hands down the best and most helpful analysis of the book I've seen anywhere online. I had so many questions when I finished reading, and I wasn't sure if that was the intent, I wasn't getting the way the characters speak, I was trusting Nell as a narrator too much, etc. I loved your breakdown and feel like I understand what I read better, so thank you! Also: I've never seen the 1999 movie but the house used for exterior shots, and I think a few interior scenes of the ballroom, is Harlaxton Manor in England. I stayed there for a few nights on a college study abroad trip. It's at least partly owned by the University of Evansville and serves as home base for their study abroad program(I didn't attend Evansville but my school was able to use summer vacancies there).
I really love how you articulate your words and I enjoyed listening to your narrative. Love your conclusion as well. Stay strong and Keep up the good work!
The first time I took an edible in college we watched the 1999 Haunting and I thought it was the best movie ever and it felt like it lasted 4 hours. It wasn’t until I talked to my friends the next morning that I realized the overall consensus is it’s super cheesy and bad 😂 the scene where Owen Wilson’s head gets bonked right off is still iconic tho
I read that in the 2018 Hill House the children were all human representations of each stage of grief. And that most of their characteristics came through the lens of their stage of grief. Steven-Denial Shirley-Anger Theo-Bargaining Luke-Depression Nell-Acceptance
i really love this video. i think you bring up some really great points about adaptation re: hill house. i do like the show, it's unfortunately a pretty typical example of compelling ideas being weighed down by it's ties to an original work. to me, i think the story mike flanagan wanted to tell abt family & enduring love - is in conflict with the themes & meanings of jackson's original book. i like both works, but it's a weird mismatch. i think its very clear that flanagan's best & most cohesive projects aren't adaptations - midnight mass has much more time to explore its intended themes bc it's not wrapped around another story. like u said, i truly don't understand why hill house (the show) is even billed as an adaptation - bc it really isn't. all similarities feel more like shout-outs rather than actual renditions of the contents of the book.
You should do more of these. These are awesome. I love this. I didn’t know any of this about the 10 episode series Hillhouse, which I liked a lot and I cried at the sad part is just when you talked about them again. I really enjoyed your entire telling of everything. I’d love to see you do this with Other books that have been adapted multiple times super fun
so while i do think the 1999 version is silly, i actually thought the confusing weird house made sense. they talk in the book about how the house is so intricately off that it makes the house seem confusing and rooms keep changing. i think it was their interpretation, but it reminded me more of thirteen ghosts lol.
No because I started mildly hyperventilating when I saw this in my subscriptions I wanna see it so bad but for now I gotta lock in an get something done Edit 11/06/2024: I got done that thing I needed to finish That little speech at the end… right now it has never been more applicable and terrifying. I have been horrified by the sheer amount of time an average human life has before it meets its end. The idea that I must endure years and years of anxiety and terror and depression and loneliness has plagued me. The directionlessness I have been feeling scrambling and jealous of others for doing the things I can’t seem to do. It’s been awful. Really really awful. Like tbh I don’t really wanna deal with all that. It just seems like too much and yet I’m making myself do things despite my unwillingness. Despite not wanting to change or grow as a person I find myself trying to make connections and hold on to the ones that I have. I find myself terrified but this was strangely comforting. The tv show of the haunting of hill house has been something I think about a lot. Nell’s monologue at the end. Time rains down like confetti. It’s so beautiful. It makes my heart ache with a warm sadness I cannot describe. That and Midnight Mass have been like a sucker punch. There’s another monologue in Midnight Mass about time and that destroyed me. I felt it tear through me like wet paper. I highly recommend the show if you like the haunting of hill house. I think the first time I heard about the haunting of hill house was a video essay about Kitty Horrorshow’s Anatomy. It remains as one of the most memorable things I’ve heard. The essay is by Jacob Geller and ever since I found myself looking at so many video essays on so many things though mostly video games. When I saw this video on my notifications I was so excited to hear another person talk about the book and the movie and the show thought at the time I needed to lock in and code some stuff I’m glad that I watched this today. Today of all days. A moment where I cried for my love ones horrified and scared and not wanting to engage with the world. That little bit at the end was It felt It was a gift. A beautifully timed gift. Thank you for making such cool videos and I hope that things are treating you well.
Hello, I just want to say: youre so naturally funny. God, Im just like 17 minutes in and I laughed out loud multiple times. Thank you for this great video
One detail that I liked about this scene 1:23:19, it’s Halloween and it’s often said that the vale for the spirit world and human world is very think around this time which wouldn’t surprise me if the house isn’t fully restricted to its walls and taunts them the same way it did in the house when they where young
The Netflix show is a comfort show for me the same way Schitt's Creek or Friends are comfort shows for other people. I've managed to catch 27 of the hidden ghosts in my rewatches so far. ;p I loved your analysis and comparisons to the original story and older adaptations! New sub activated!
I like what Surly Jackson said about Hill House “some houses are inherently born evil, and are destined to be haunted from the moment they're built” I saw both movies and read the book. The 1960’s version is closer to the book rather than the 1999 movie.
I think the 2018 version is more centered around grief with the ghosts and the house representing that grief and how it forms differently in each member of the family and how people choose to interact with each other after a traumatic event. The haunting was just a way for Mike Flanaghan to portray this kind of grief.
I was laughing at you destroy the haunting then I started actually looking at the house and I was like “yooooo this is the haunted house movie that traumatized me as a kid!” I feel sorta relieved this was just an experimental film version of a book that was made in the 1950s. It was the catalyst of my fear of haunted houses.
I know the 1999 version is probably a poor adaptation but I still love it. I watched it young. I loved the mansion and the conservatory. I loved Theo’s and Elinor’s relationship. And I loved Mrs. Dudley. Ooh and that fire place…I’ll never forget that.
I feel like, in the latest series, the reason Nell was able to forgive her siblings as soon as she saw them has to do with what she says about time - as one of the dead in Hill House, she's not experiencing time linearly. She's bouncing around the timeline, seeing past and future and present, and - given that she's been haunting both herself and her siblings - she can see moments outside of the house, too. Ironically, she's probably had more time and space to come to terms with things after death than she ever did while alive. Nell is, in some sense, the oldest and wisest out of all of them now; she also has the perspective that death (your own or someone else's) can give you - that some of the problems you find so important actually aren't. That love and forgiveness can be so, so powerful and healing, and that letting your loved ones know that they're important to you is wayyyy better than winning an argument that, chances are, you'll forget the cause of in a few decades.
this!!! also, i didn't get the impression that she had forgiven the house or was romanticizing it in her final scenes, she even said the line that she felt like a small creature trapped in the belly of a monster. her face alone in that scene conveyed her feelings towards it. she was just focusing on getting her siblings out alive and getting to say goodbye, she wouldn't have wanted to speak too much about the house and lead them to forever worrying and being haunted by her eternity there.
@@reganrose2866 Yeah for sure - she was just making the best of a terrible situation for herself
right
That, is amazing insight
One tangentially related adaptation is Rose Red, a miniseries that started off as an adaption but was reworked into something else.
Heads up for anyone watching; first two parts are spooky and fun, last third is pretty terrible. Also, made by Stephen King and focuses a little too hard on the autistic-child-psychic stuff
@@jazzymoth Oh, yeah. It came out in 2002 so please take into account the state of just how people were treated back then.
Isn’t this an adaption of Stephen King’s work?
@ no, he wrote the script for it
I honestly was thinking in the beginning of this that it was similar or had a similar idea to that stephen king flim.
‘Everyone’s smoking. Everyone’s drinking. Not a glass of water in SIGHT.’
Girl I know that life
For me, Nell's choice was she wanted freedom from the pain and loneliness more than she wanted the apology. Hill House is a great setting for that kind of turnaround: either be haunted for eternity or move forward. She was a real Gothic heroine in that scene, all delicate sensibility and affectionate heart in a wretched moment. It was giving Brontë.
She gave her youth to her mother’s companion. Her mother never thought her daughter needed a life of her own. When her mother died she had nothing because she was never allowed to even know that she could. Her sister who had a life thought that her sister would be fine but she never thought to ask. The main character has a problem that no one ever thinks of. She was raised as a companion. She has no friends of her own. She doesn’t know how to make friends her own age because she was never around people her age. The place where she lives is taking from her, the car that she helped to pay for has been taken from her. She is alone. She has no one. When she tries to make friends they don’t want her. This is the horror. An unwanted woman with no idea how to deal with life. Not ghost. You have no husband no children so you dont get to keep the house that you’re living in. The house that you have been paying bills for. They have children, that you have been taking care of while they live like they haven’t got any responsibilities. Most people don’t get the real horror of this story so they make the ghosts real. The horror is of a life and body wasted while being told that you must wait for them to sow their wild oats of finish school. When they are done you’re told to start your life. You have no friends no romantic possibilities because you’ve never learned to make them. I wish people would stop trying to make movies about this book. You don’t get it so you add tropes from scary stories. The childless aunt that raised everyone else’s children but ends up alone in the rest home is the horror.
I tried to watch a video of a professor pontificating about the book but i couldn't do it. He had no idea what he was talking about. It's really hard to find actual, competent analysis in video/audio form (i drive for work)
period. thank you.
Even throughout the book, Eleanor is essentially trying to play a part: her inner monologue is often at odds with her dialogue to others. She seems to be play-acting and trying to emphasizing that she belongs and that she has friends: it's just as much that when she feels like she is there and everyone else is in on jokes, she is left out and a step or two behind.
Ms. Jackson knew psychology that had not even been discovered yet. I understand Nell, she’s suffered cptsd from her narcissistic mother and sister. She had trouble relating to people due to her isolation, paranoid, she was passively suicidal ( sleeping on her left side to wear out her heart) , and she was a maladaptive daydreamer. Brilliantly done.
Also fun fact about the actor that played Dr. Montague in the Hill House series he played Luke in 1960s film adaptation 😊😊
Damn he's old 😭
Yes! Russ Tamblyn, one of the main characters (Riff) in 1961's West Side Story and much later was in Twin Peaks as a very strange therapist.
@@Stonedandbookishyeah no shit, it’s called “aging” if you know what that is
I have a soft spot for the 1999 adaptation, 'cause I watched it as a kid and my little queer self from back then was fascinated by the relationship between Zeta-Jones' Theodora and Taylor's Nell. I still love their performances.
It’s campy and fun. Love the set… the movie itself? Terrible garbage… but it’s *my* terrible garbage and I kinda love it
The book is wonderful. Truly a great ghost story. As for the play, a high you couldn't find footage of, I had the role of Eleanor in a community theatre production in the nineties. Maybe not high art, but we had a blast, and so did our audience ❤😂
@@JuliaKapp wAIT REALLY? I need to hear everything: what was the general plot? Did it follow the book? Any surprise twist endings?
@@grimmelleHi, this is Julia. I sent you a reply, but I don't think it went through, so I am rewriting it.
I see that you are interested in that production of The Haunting of Hill House that was in thirty plus years ago. I Eleanor. The production was at Mountain Community Theatre in Ben Lomond CA, which is in the Santa Cruz mountains, just about 20 minutes from the city.
It was a very good production. I think the script was pretty true to the book and the sixties version of the film. There was an added character in the play. Mrs Montague, wife of Dr Montague, who is a medium and disagrees with her husband's scientific methods. The ending is true to the novel, Eleanor decides to "stay" with the house. I remember the set was beautiful. The guy who designed it was a real artist. Very Gothic with dark wood and evil looking 👼 😮 wish I could say I still have pictures of it, but I don't. It was video taped, it I don't remember getting a copy. Too bad, it would be surreal to see it thirty plus years later 😂 Thanks for bring back such fun memories ❤
I was 19 and it was the first hill house I watched and did so before reading the book... so yeah I have a soft spot for 1999 version too
I actually loved Liv in The Haunting of Hill House. I don't think her fears and stuff was 'women be crazy bout children', it actually felt very raw and real, the depiction of the many horrors and terrible nightmares a mother might have about her children's lifes and futures. It of course is exaggerated beyond insanity, but the base is there and although i'm not a mother i can definetly see how horrofying the thought of your own children dying before you can be for a mum.
I also loved it in general, and i find most criticisms people have are either subjective or nitpicky. One thing i didn't like was how many monologues there are because Flannagan loves a long monologue speech, and sometimes they can drag on, but overall the show is pretty solid. I have seen people nitpick it a lot tho, even criticising the acting of the children which like ??? Damn, but the monologuing is a critique i can definetly see and accept bc it can make the show feel a little slow at times.
My thoughts on the many monologues and slowing down the show is that they were overdone in Midnight Mass, especially the monologues performed by Kate Siegel's character Erin. I honestly fast forward through some of them, mostly the conversation between Erin and Riley about death. I now expect Kate to get a lot of monologues in all of Flanagan's work since that's his wife and she is an fantastic actress.
The kid actors were actually really impressive imo
I can help with historical context! : The conversation about the picnic and the bull isn't actually changing subjects. They're riffing off of stereotypes about picnics and common elements in funny stories. Like that ants always show up at picnics (we still have that trope). And there are lots of old funny stories about people going on picnics and ending up crossing a field where a bull was, and getting chased by the bull. The bit with the comic uncle is an element that shows up in a lot of funny stories, too. So basically they're just joking around about the kinds of funny stories that get passed down in families: "Hey, (ha ha ha) remember that time we went for a picnic, and we were WARNED not to go into the field with the bull in it. But Uncle Harry - you know Uncle Harry, he was also funny - Well, Uncle Harry decided the bull wasn't dangerous. And--" Like that. It's just based on story tropes from the period. // The ghost-hunting stuff: Ghost-hunting was actually really popular as early as the Victorian era, when Spiritualism became a big trend: seances and ghost-rapping and stuff. Planchettes were used for "spirit writing" in the Victorian era, and later with ouija boards, which were invented in the 1890s and became really popular in WWI (because so many people had died in the war, and people wanted to contact them). // You could absolutely die in carriage accidents! A runaway horse can go 25 to 35 mph, and carriages were narrow and top-heavy (like Jeeps lol) so they tipped over pretty easily. There were also no safety devices in carriages of course, so you could easily get thrown from one and break your neck.
Are you… a ghost?
Right? Even in modern times, country folk love to talk about "that one time we ran across the field with the bull"
@@PxsDD Yes.
Thank you! I was gonna mention these but you beat me to them 😂 maybe not the small talk back in the day because I’m not a ghost but for sure the spiritualism and surprisingly deadly carriages
About Poppy Hill, it's interesting how the House seems to pick a specific "avatar" for the different generations. Poppy Hill selected Olivia to become part of the house, and then Olivia goes along to be the "face" of Hill House to cause more people to die there. Poppy doesn't really show up again except in background shots after Olivia dies.
Poppy literally knocks all the kids out when they go back to the house, and then recites a long nursery rhyme (or retelling of her family’s deaths/murders?) to Hugh.
With the poltergeist and nell the implication is, that she herself is the source of the haunting. Thats why Theos room got destroyed when nell was angry with her. It a common thing in ghosthunting to look at the dynamic in a house and often it gets attributed to a depressed unhappy girl or woman, its really interesting, not a ghost in the usuall sense but like supernatural DID
Steve in the Netflix show is almost certainly named after Steven King, Haunting of Hill House super fan and horror novelist. He's also responsible for the mini-series Rose Red which is basically his love letter to Hill House.
Also Nell's therapist is the same actor who played Luke in the the original Haunting movie.
I’d have to check, but doesn’t Salem’s Lot include a reference to Hill House?
I always thought that the slight difference in the closing was interesting - the novel closes with "whatever walks there, walks alone." The series ends with "And those who walk there, walk together."
*"It was murder. It was ghost murder!"*
You're so funny, I can't believe I'm just now finding your channel 😂
“It was murder!”
“But, she killed herself..?”
“Yes… she *hated* herself”
i'd like to add that i've also had a terrible year (like you said, im only 26, so theres plenty of room for worse) that's left me barely a ghost of what i was. For months i would lay in bed looking at my wall and think that i was no different to a ghost haunting my room. When I got to the conclusion of your video, it really made me start crying. I feel oddly hopeful now, thank you.
I really liked the Haunting 1999 when it came out, I was 12, so excuse my bad taste but some of the scene were memorable, like the piano string. That scene has haunted me (pun intended) for years.
I came here to say the same thing, I LOVED this movie as a child! I made a mistake of re-watching it years later tho...
I watched it when I was 12 too and it made me love the horror genre. 20 years later I watched it with my niece and she loved it. And I still love it too! Such a lovely movie, I don't understand why it gets so much hate 😢
Nellie's speech at the end of the series makes me cry every time.
Took me over half the Analysis of "The Haunting" to realise that this was the first horror movie I've ever seen! I never knew it was based on Hill House, what a weird experience
I had a thought about why 1999 Hill House looks the way it does; some rich pedo who stole children from his factory mills, murdered them, and burned them in the fireplace wouldn't build a house to home a family. Just some estate that screams 'look at my vast wealth!' Just empty, vast, and hallow. Now the house set in the 1963 movie does look like a house built for a family, a rich family yes, but that wealth and homely feel hides the hidden sinister.
It's been a long time so maybe I'm mis-remembering but I think it said for the 1999 version that Hugh Crane hunted the children & added on to the house for that purpose. I know his ghost definitely hunts the children's ghosts but I thought the implication was that it was a continuation of some creepy hide & seek murder-game he played with his victims in life.
@@vadalia3860 Could be either.
i clicked on this vid expecting a simple analysis and got so much more i agree with your point alot that the show could've stood for itself cause if i'd known about the original book before, i might not have appreciated the show for what it is. i relate a lot to nell's character, and the ending of this vid really spoke to me ❤️
also there’s a theory that the final scene’s red hints mean they’re still in the red room, but like you said, everyone deserves a happy ending, so i wanna believe they got theirs it would be too cruel if they didnt 🥲
Also doctor Montague in the show was played by Luke from the 1960’s Haunting movie.
Have you watched Midnight Mass? If you loved Hill House but want an original story, it’s Mike Flanagan telling his own original story. It’s beautiful.
I have actually! Can I tell you anything about the plot? Absolutely not, but I appreciated the modernized vampire story
@@grimmelle Did you know Midnight Mass is a easter egg in Mike Flanagans movie Hush? The main character is the author of the book and you might recognize the main character as the actress who plays Erin Greene. Also her neighbor is played by Bev Keane.
i feel like the haunting of bly manor had more in common with the original story than the hill house series besides the names and stuff
Loved the breakdown of the book and older adaptations put several missed points about Luke's timeline of drug abuse and a couple other nuances make me think maybe you should watch the series again😅
Yeah same NGL
Thank you for your words on mental health. Really not what i expected when i clicked on this video, but great to hear. And best of all it was one of your best videos so far imo regardless of that.
1:01:12 as someone who was already a fan of the book and 1963 adaptation, I completely agree. I've always thought that if the show had a different name and gave the characters different names, I probably wouldn't have realised it was based on the book at all. I would have enjoyed it so much more if it was just its own thing because i kept comparing it to the book in my head the whole time
It's definitely a strong enough story to stand on its own, so I don't get why it had to be an adaptation
Anyway, I really enjoyed this video! I absolutely love Jackson's works, especially Hill House and you did some great analysis! 😊
The Haunting 1999 was the first horror film i ever saw, and it made me fall in love with the genre. I was 12. Years later, it was the first scary movie i watched with my niece, and of course, we made fun of the entire movie, but we created a bond between us , cause she's almost the same age I was when I first watcjed it. Now, we have our own little tradition of watching creepy movies/series. This movie will always be important to me, no matter how much hate it gets. I love it for personal reasons ❤
I had the 1999 one on dvd as a kid/teen.
It took me so long to realise after watching the series that it had the same source material.
It's so campy. And I love it.
I love that movie. I don't care that it's bad, it's a fun watch. I'm going to go watch it right now, in fact.
Your vids are some of my faves. “Meet cute at the institute” killed me
I feel like the modern version is Hill House in a different timeline. Different plots, but absolutely the same house.
I really like this summarization! This video does a great job contrasting the different plots of The Haunting of Hill House adaptions, and I think is really insightful to the development of the haunting horror genre over time.
One thing I will say about The Haunting of Hill House Flanagan adaption is that the haunting for each character is symbolic of their grief. There's been a lot of chatter about how each character represents the different stages of grief, but it is also a little deeper than that.
Steve relives his grief over and over. It's public, he made a profit off of it, and is constantly reminded of it, enough that he doesn't even recognize that it is grief. He is haunted by the fact he can't explain it, even when he tried.
Shirley is haunted by mourning. She's never moved past it, I mean she literally lives in a funeral home. She keeps a model of her mom's forever house on the table. She insists on taking care of Nell's body because that is the only way she knows how to mourn. Her grief never moved past her mom's funeral, which is why she's so pissed at Steve.
Theo is haunted by the trauma of the incident. She's watched her family deal with the trauma poorly, she is empathic and feels the trauma of people and objects intimately. She associates emotions with pain, which is why she struggles with emotional intimacy and vulnerability (see the rock wall monologue). Even as a child psychologist, she's very factual about feelings, especially directed at adults.
Luke is haunted by what he saw. As you noted, he saw a lot of different things and was never believed. The monologue at the beginning of his episode by the guy who tore out his own eyes is meant to really emphasize sight in his episode, and that dulling your senses with drugs doesn't actually block that out. Luke has trouble bringing up his past and his ghosts, and they literally follow him - coalescing in the fact that it took a long time for him to really understand what happened to his mom (which is one reason the hatman turned into her). He also craves connection, which I think is why he had the friend at rehab, but because he's been blinded by his past he can't see the danger signs and is abandoned again. There's also the poison comparison with drugs and the rat poison that is especially notable.
Nell is haunted by the feelings of Hill House. She's depressed and manic, and the twist of her story really finishes that literally. She's haunted by a life she never had and never got to live past. Her future died in that house.
You can see the "haunted" themes in the original book as well, and Flanagan has shown he takes a unique approach to adaption that specifically focuses on theme. There is the disconnect of family themes between the series and the book, but otherwise that may be why the Neftlix show has such a compelling use of the material that still feels connected to the source, even with the differences.
The other thing that is incredibly important to note is that ghosts and haunting are "real" but also "not real" when they are utilized in the story. Yes, the characters lived in a haunted house, but they are haunted by their experiences there - primarily their mother's death. All the "supernatural experiences" can and should be treated as symbolic and exaggerations of reality. The mom was going crazy because she was starting to realize that her dream of a happy hope was starting to age as her children grew up; she wanted to protect them and keep them young. The Hill's represent the twisted idea of family and a home, and how to "fix" your own problems. Yes, they are real ghosts in the story, but they don't need to take away from the root of the message as long as you treat it as an exaggeration of what they represent.
I am watching this video now and when she questioned the significance of the blind addict's monologue and Luke's rehab lady friend, I got a bit offended like these are real people. lol. Yeah, I was wondering if she had gotten to the end of the series because the "blind" monologue and the girl from rehab do show back up later in the series.
Oh and now she describes Theo's monologue ,after Nell's ghost appears in the car, as "long and overacted" and a weird plotline...ma'am??!!! That was an explanation for most of Theo's behavior in her plotline. I love these characters and the series, so maybe I'm being harsh, but I have never heard anyone critique the performances and story this way.
@@itss_nattyjyeah, PTSD is no joke, I was also pretty off-put by that comment. Especially within the context of drug abuse.
And yeah! That was Theo finally being emotionally vulnerable! Letting down those thick brick walls. Contrasted with the Hill member who literally bricked himself into the foundation. Like, the parallel is very clear if you pay attention lol
Thank you for your vulnerability near the end. I'm in a similar spot, a little older even, and it feels comforting to hear from other people who are going through the same thing.
58:49 Never seen someone scream in lower case 😂
The Haunting of Hill house stimming from a book is fascinating and I'm so glad I got to learn about it from you!! The little illustration of you by the candles is so cute and nice touch!
Eleanor has psychic/ telekinetic potential. She came into the house with unhappiness and emotional problems, because the house is alive it overtook her. The house also has the ability to mess with their emotions and make them hallucinate.
I’m so glad that someone put together an analysis of the book and its adaptations! You did a phenomenal job and I appreciate the vulnerability at the end. I think what you’re doing here is meaningful.
I can absolutely acknowledge that the 1999 version is a terrible adaptation of a fabulous story, and is generally a cheesy 90's movie, but my god is it one of my favorite movies.
My favorite part of the TV show was that 17-minute long one-shot at the funeral. Nothing has quite ever topped that episode for me, I’m still completely enraptured every time I go back and watch it
I loved the book, and I honestly love all three adaptations in different ways.
since the part about luke being paid off to not show up at nell's wedding wasn't clarified in the video: its because he showed up high. he was late and he was on something. thats why both shirley and steve told him to leave.
some people who haven't watched the series might not know this and think they were just ostracizing him and trying to keep him away from a family event but thats not the case entirely.
hype new grimmelle video...
Hey! I really liked your video and your wonderfully in-depth analysis of hill house. I also loved the TV show and now I want to read the book!! Thank you again!
(Novel) I love the idea that the relationship b/w Dr. Montague and his wife being a mirrored satirical take on Jackson's irl relationship with her infamously unfaithful husband who was a professor and academic writer. While he supported her work, he also belittled her, especially once she started making more money than him saying essentially that she was an "idiot savant" who needed his touch ups to make her work readable. He also had a brother named Arthur. Mrs. Jackson was also known for putting on a "witchy" persona, although this was believed mostly to be played up to mess with peoples' misconceptions and biases that had formed about her and less of a genuine practice in the occult. So, the idea that this professor who ruins his career based on his shared belief in the supernatural (even though he judges how his wife goes about "proving" it) and has this domineering wife with a manservant who it's implied she's having an affair with show up halfway in the book... It was Jackson's way of "cucking" her husband while also poking fun at herself and the entire nature of their relationship and the dysfunction/horror of it all.
Also, having been someone who has struggled in the past with intense mental illness similar to Mrs. Jackson's and Eleanor's, when you impose yourself on people in the way that is depicted in the book, people tend to avoid confronting it head on and will instead opt for either ignoring it or by dropping hints in hopes that you will pick them up and take action yourself, relieving them of any responsibility. The multiple times the other guests suggest that Eleanor should leave, they are hoping she will either leave or take the hint that they are suggesting she should leave and "snap out of it". Then, when these social cues that typically work for others continue to fail, in societies where we are not taught how to properly manage these behaviors in ourselves or others/loved ones we typically revert back to when we last saw these types of "social faux pas" so aggressively and commonly transgressed - childhood. Plus, people are taught that avoidance and hints *are* the nice way to tackle these things as adults. So when these fail and adults get frustrated they can fall back to childhood tactics like the ones seen in the woods where they let Nell wander off alone for some "peace" and then react coldly when she gets upset about it. Also, I believe we are meant to see a bit of a parallel between how Eleanor viewed her mother and how the others view her over the course of the stay. This is further proved by the whole "let me live with you Theo" thing she does randomly, which is a cry for help and it's the only thing she knows "I lived with mom and took care of her, my sister isn't much of a sister but *Theo is*". In the context of the book though, we can chalk everything up to being magnified by the House, from Eleanor's psychosis to the cruel apathy/inaction of the others.
I've always maintained the scariest homes are haunted by the living, so it makes sense that Mrs. Jackson implied Eleanor to be the source of poltergeist activity long before ever coming to Hill House, suggesting the House to merely amplify what is already there.
(Netflix series) I think this series is great because it essentially says what if instead of a group of strangers it's a family? Then examines the ways that a family estranges one another and gives up, which is a much more difficult process for a lot of people to tackle than a group of relative strangers ousting another stranger like shown in the novel. I feel that the book examined the ways that societal expectations shape our inter-personal relationships, the show took a more direct approach of examining how they shape our familial ties. Inspired adaptation is more fitting imo, like you said but I'm glad it's getting Shirley Jackson's work to a new modern audience like myself lol
Great video!
"One man built this in the 1800s, why are things moving?!" 🤣🤣🤣
(Damn, but I'd inadvisably sign up to chill in a haunted house for $900 a week, are you kidding!?! In *this* economy? The US dollar goes a long way where I'm from, baby 🤭)
Okay I was obsessed with the 99 movie as a kid because I loved the big huge house. That being said it does address some of your comments.
Hugh Crane built the house so big and confusing so the kids would/could play hide and seek with him.
The doctor character does go to investigate the fireplace but it has been jammed closed and he cannot open it.
And I always took the dad dying at the end of the miniseries as him trading himself for the kid's safety.
Hugh Crane didn't want to get Nel ghost-pregnant in the 1999 version, he's her grandfather or great-grandfather. She got a vision of the preggo belly when she was putting together that she felt so drawn to Hill House because Crane's missing second wife realized he was serial murdering the townfolk's children & ran away but discovered she was pregnant after doing so.
Just discovered you channel with this content and THANK YOU!!! lol I saw The Haunting - 1963 and loved it and will always be my favorite. The use of shadows, camera angles and sound to really get to you. I love it. Was excited about the remake, which is unusual for me, I don't normally like updates and the 1999 one was as disappointing as most remakes/updates tend to be. For me, the CGI was just too much and the complete story change as well as the "house" design just didn't do it for me. I've never read the book but now want to, so thank you for that as well. I love how you delve into so much of each and am looking forward to checking out more of your content. As for the show? They could have and should have made it a stand alone show that had nothing to do with the original content it's "based" on. It was good, but not The Haunting. Thanks for this gem.
So glad to see another upload from you, happy halloween! Thank you for the long form video ❤
Such a great video! I'm sorry your year has been so bad. I hope the best for you!
I just watched the netflix series so this video came at the perfect time! Great job, really interesting and you have a great delivery!
I appreciate that you called out the difficulty in reading anything from the 2018 series ending, I've had the thought on my watch throughs that it feels kinda conflicted when you try to break it down into anything broader.
fun fact: Dr Montague in the netflix series is played by the same actor who played Luke in the 1963 film
55:53 You did *not* just come for the perfect spooky lady Lili Taylor. Your homework is "The Addiction" (1995).
Still watching your vid so I may have more comments coming lol
First, thanks for doing a video on this, I watched the series and the 99 movie, never knew about the book.
As far as the carriage crashing into the tree in the book, killing Mrs. Crain. Horses are extremely sensitive to their surroundings and are easily spooked. A spooked horse takes off running as fast as it can. Unfortunately they can and do run into obvious hazards like a tree in their attempt to flee. So I think what the author, Ms. Jackson, was going for is that the house was never right. There was always something dark there, the horses sensed it and instead of proceeding to the house tried to flee from it but because the house is evil, it doesn't let anyone it wants to escape it.
I love The Hounting of the Hill House and I had no idea it was based on a book! Also loved your video, it was so very well done!
Crying rn. Thank you so much for a truly exceptional video. Love you so much, so happy you exist.
Wow, what a wonderful synopsis and analysis! I’m sure this took a lot of work and was so satisfying to watch.
That last bit... Thank you. I needed to hear that. 😭💖
Oh my gosh, you are back!! Pls talk about some of junji itos other stories i liked uzumaki and the one with the girl tomei i think you are the best storyteller ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ pls
I don't know if anyone has suggested this in the comments already, but you should check out Rose Red. It's a Stephen King miniseries which is VERY Stephen King, but also a not-so-thinly-veiled reimagining or reworking of Hill House.
I had no idea what to xpect when I clicked on this video, but man is this it.
Another 2 hour long banger about a piece of media I have no outside interest in damn skippy
This was such an AMAZING watch, please do more of this type of content because I’d eagerly watch it all 🥰
I just watched The Innocents from the 1960’s which I didn’t realize was a telling of Bly Manor.
I now feel Stephen King based Carrie off nell! Great review!
I really like the vibe of the background illustrations
i adore Flanagan's adaptation so much that i own it on DVD and it lead me to purchasing the book. this is my comfort media, i even have a tattoo of the door to the red room. im happy you made this video, i liked some of your thoughts.
This is hands down the best and most helpful analysis of the book I've seen anywhere online. I had so many questions when I finished reading, and I wasn't sure if that was the intent, I wasn't getting the way the characters speak, I was trusting Nell as a narrator too much, etc. I loved your breakdown and feel like I understand what I read better, so thank you!
Also: I've never seen the 1999 movie but the house used for exterior shots, and I think a few interior scenes of the ballroom, is Harlaxton Manor in England. I stayed there for a few nights on a college study abroad trip. It's at least partly owned by the University of Evansville and serves as home base for their study abroad program(I didn't attend Evansville but my school was able to use summer vacancies there).
The Haunting is one of my guilty pleasure movies lol. Mostly for Catherine Zeta-Jones 😍😂
I really love how you articulate your words and I enjoyed listening to your narrative. Love your conclusion as well. Stay strong and Keep up the good work!
Thank you! This was so timely, I loved listening to this whole thing.
The first time I took an edible in college we watched the 1999 Haunting and I thought it was the best movie ever and it felt like it lasted 4 hours. It wasn’t until I talked to my friends the next morning that I realized the overall consensus is it’s super cheesy and bad 😂 the scene where Owen Wilson’s head gets bonked right off is still iconic tho
This was one of the very few books that actually scared me while I read it.
I really enjoyed your video. This was great to listen to. Hope you do more!
I read that in the 2018 Hill House the children were all human representations of each stage of grief. And that most of their characteristics came through the lens of their stage of grief.
Steven-Denial
Shirley-Anger
Theo-Bargaining
Luke-Depression
Nell-Acceptance
i really love this video. i think you bring up some really great points about adaptation re: hill house. i do like the show, it's unfortunately a pretty typical example of compelling ideas being weighed down by it's ties to an original work. to me, i think the story mike flanagan wanted to tell abt family & enduring love - is in conflict with the themes & meanings of jackson's original book. i like both works, but it's a weird mismatch. i think its very clear that flanagan's best & most cohesive projects aren't adaptations - midnight mass has much more time to explore its intended themes bc it's not wrapped around another story. like u said, i truly don't understand why hill house (the show) is even billed as an adaptation - bc it really isn't. all similarities feel more like shout-outs rather than actual renditions of the contents of the book.
About 3 years ago I finally read the book myself and I absolutely loved it. Immediately jumped to my top 5 favorite horror books of all time.
You should do more of these. These are awesome. I love this. I didn’t know any of this about the 10 episode series Hillhouse, which I liked a lot and I cried at the sad part is just when you talked about them again. I really enjoyed your entire telling of everything. I’d love to see you do this with Other books that have been adapted multiple times super fun
Great video as always
so while i do think the 1999 version is silly, i actually thought the confusing weird house made sense. they talk in the book about how the house is so intricately off that it makes the house seem confusing and rooms keep changing. i think it was their interpretation, but it reminded me more of thirteen ghosts lol.
No because I started mildly hyperventilating when I saw this in my subscriptions I wanna see it so bad but for now I gotta lock in an get something done
Edit 11/06/2024: I got done that thing I needed to finish
That little speech at the end… right now it has never been more applicable and terrifying. I have been horrified by the sheer amount of time an average human life has before it meets its end. The idea that I must endure years and years of anxiety and terror and depression and loneliness has plagued me. The directionlessness I have been feeling scrambling and jealous of others for doing the things I can’t seem to do. It’s been awful. Really really awful. Like tbh I don’t really wanna deal with all that. It just seems like too much and yet I’m making myself do things despite my unwillingness. Despite not wanting to change or grow as a person I find myself trying to make connections and hold on to the ones that I have. I find myself terrified but this was strangely comforting.
The tv show of the haunting of hill house has been something I think about a lot.
Nell’s monologue at the end. Time rains down like confetti. It’s so beautiful. It makes my heart ache with a warm sadness I cannot describe. That and Midnight Mass have been like a sucker punch. There’s another monologue in Midnight Mass about time and that destroyed me. I felt it tear through me like wet paper. I highly recommend the show if you like the haunting of hill house.
I think the first time I heard about the haunting of hill house was a video essay about Kitty Horrorshow’s Anatomy. It remains as one of the most memorable things I’ve heard. The essay is by Jacob Geller and ever since I found myself looking at so many video essays on so many things though mostly video games. When I saw this video on my notifications I was so excited to hear another person talk about the book and the movie and the show thought at the time I needed to lock in and code some stuff I’m glad that I watched this today. Today of all days. A moment where I cried for my love ones horrified and scared and not wanting to engage with the world. That little bit at the end was
It felt
It was a gift. A beautifully timed gift.
Thank you for making such cool videos and I hope that things are treating you well.
I LOVE how nel holds her head at a bent angle in the red room!
Hello, I just want to say: youre so naturally funny. God, Im just like 17 minutes in and I laughed out loud multiple times. Thank you for this great video
Did you notice the actor playing Nell's therapist in the flashbacks was played by Russ Tamblyn? He played Luke in the 62 adaptation.
You are so funny I can’t believe I’ve never found any of your videos! I enjoyed this video so much, a happy new subscriber 🤓
I've only read the book + saw the 60s movie long ago but this was a great video. Truly.
Don't be doomed by the narrative is good advice. Legit.
THE ORIGINAL MOVIE, 1963, WITH JULIE HARRIS. ITS SOOOOGOOD!!! BLACK AND WHITE👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
I love everything about the book, shows and movies. Thank you for the deep dive
One detail that I liked about this scene 1:23:19, it’s Halloween and it’s often said that the vale for the spirit world and human world is very think around this time which wouldn’t surprise me if the house isn’t fully restricted to its walls and taunts them the same way it did in the house when they where young
The Netflix show is a comfort show for me the same way Schitt's Creek or Friends are comfort shows for other people. I've managed to catch 27 of the hidden ghosts in my rewatches so far. ;p I loved your analysis and comparisons to the original story and older adaptations! New sub activated!
I like what Surly Jackson said about Hill House “some houses are inherently born evil, and are destined to be haunted from the moment they're built”
I saw both movies and read the book. The 1960’s version is closer to the book rather than the 1999 movie.
also The Haunting 1999 was the first horror movie I ever watched... so I feel a little defensive and nostalgic about it lol.
Love this video, excited to see what else you've got. And HELLLLL YEAH RANDOM HORROR 9!!!
I think the 2018 version is more centered around grief with the ghosts and the house representing that grief and how it forms differently in each member of the family and how people choose to interact with each other after a traumatic event. The haunting was just a way for Mike Flanaghan to portray this kind of grief.
I was laughing at you destroy the haunting then I started actually looking at the house and I was like “yooooo this is the haunted house movie that traumatized me as a kid!” I feel sorta relieved this was just an experimental film version of a book that was made in the 1950s. It was the catalyst of my fear of haunted houses.
hell yeah new Grimm
After you described the story, it legit sounds like The Haunting of Bly Manor also took inspiration from the original story.
I never knew this was an adaptation actually, but I watched it a while back. I might have to go read the original now it sounds good-
Midnight Mass might be my favorite horror show of all time, Mike Flanagan really good
I know the 1999 version is probably a poor adaptation but I still love it. I watched it young. I loved the mansion and the conservatory. I loved Theo’s and Elinor’s relationship. And I loved Mrs. Dudley. Ooh and that fire place…I’ll never forget that.