funnily enough, despite the silly puppet cat, i found Leo’s death one of the most harrowing. something about his unbridled descent into rage really had my heart pumping. i really wish they had spent more time with Vic. i think the writers underestimated what a cruel character she was. she tortured and killed tons of animals in her ambition, and was willing to condemn an innocent woman to possible death with her experimental trial. i think she really got out easy for what she had done, and her story deserved a lot more build up.
I totally agree about vic! Some more build up would have helped a lot. I think the build up for Leo's death was really good, the imagery was just so silly it undercut the horror of it for me. The poor boyfriend though! I felt terrible for him
I felt the complete opposite about the jokes/comedy aspect. I thought it was a PERFECT depiction of what people this rich are actually like. They’re immature, raunchy, almost downright goofy because they are so removed from reality. I think of The Sponsors from Squid games. They spend their whole time in screen cracking jokes and making sexual innuendos. I felt it fit each character perfectly when it happened And added a fun bit of levity almost reminding you “these are not good people, you can find humor in their death”
That's an excellent point! There were definitely some jokes that did land for me, I think it just felt a bit like tonal whiplash sometimes and that took me out of the darker and more lofty parts of the story a bit. I absolutely love the way Bruce Greenwood delivers Roderick's lines, he's so perfectly glib
Frederick's death was my favourite scene, and not just because of the vindication i felt because of what he did to morrie. Verna's hints of another life (which i wish was explored more), the time spent just watching the pendulum swing, the entire detail of him dying with his pants half down. It was a brilliant scene
Though this isn't my favourite series Flanagan has done, it has fascinated me the most. I think it's the most complicated in terms of multiple timelines merging into their inevitable consequences, and it could have easily become a mess in the wrong hands. Somehow the story managed to stay grounded, anchored by the framing device of Auggie and Roderick. At multiple time during my first viewing, I found myself very impressed with the acting, directing, writing and editing skill on display. However, that did take me out of the story as well. I wasn't as invested in the characters as I was with past Flanagan series.
I felt this this one was a lot more straightforward than the others, the only real mystery is WHY everything is happening, but it felt kind of like a spoiler for the show to show us all the kids were dead, right off the bat. I wish they’d left more mystery there. I get that it’s a story about how the Usher family fell, it’s literally the name of the show, but it didn’t leave much for you to wonder about. It felt more like you were checking off boxes as the characters died, and there was no real reason to get attached to the characters in any way because you knew they were about to die. It was a good show still, I’ll definitely rewatch it once enough time passes, but it felt like watching an old movie you already knew the ending to, but not how they got to that end, if that makes sense
@@renrants- I agree. I know we are all responsible for ourselves but he let her lead him. Once Annabel left he really went astray….. so sad. He also sacrificed his kids!!.. Madeline didn’t have kids… the best choice
Fitzgerald and Segal are the two actors who take this from an intriguing story to a brilliant season of television. I LOVED both their portrayals. Tina and Toby also took their demotions from main characters in Midnight Club in good stride as they killed it as Segal’s assistants. The one aspect of the series that I felt really held it back was the writing for Vic. I feel like the writers absolutely WASTED a chance to better adapt “Telltale Heart”. They could’ve taken a much more literal interpretation, and Vic’s madness comes out of nowhere. She was clearly obsessive from episode one but she never indicated she’d come unhinged in minutes and stab herself. That could’ve been better.
I totally agree, especially about the writing for Vic. And T'Nia Miller does the best she can with the writing, but it just feels so incredibly weak, especially compared to the stronger episodes
I totally agree with this analysis. Especially the Vic character. It felt like they did an incredible disservice to an amazing actor who deserved the same quality of storytelling as the other characters. But I also really loved it, overall.
I agree on the tone, I feel like a lot of the horror was lost on me on account of both flat jokes and a bit of an overreliance on jumpscares. I was really impressed with the ending of Perry's episode (and yes you're right, that must have taken a pile of money to make). It was in my opinion one of the most terrible deaths along with Lenore's, mostly because it felt like a direct consequence of the family's cruelty. The rest though, I don't know, it didn't hit me as hard. The last episode especially, truly last-minute-halloween visuals; perhaps it would have been better if they hadn't shown Madeline at all in the end, nothing scarier than one's own imagination I suppose. Anyway, great vid!
Yeah, the jokes just didn't work for me and I totally agree about the jump scares. Perry's death was so grotesque it was impressive. I also love that it was foreshadowed when one of the lawyers he wasn't listening to mentioned some of the pollution was highly acidic. Poor Lenore had me crying like a baby 😭 and poor Morrie losing her. I wonder if the visuals at the end were better before the reshoots, because it was so cheesy looking I have a hard time believing that was always the vision for that scene 🤣🤣
@@renrants yeaaahh, about Perry’s death, when they first mentioned the sprinklers I guessed something of the sort might happen, but I never imagined they would show it on screen in such a graphic way, it was truly haunting. The scene with Lenore really got to me too. I’d been a little skeptic of the more emotional side of the series by that point, but that conversation was just heartbreaking. God I love Carla Gugino so much! And yeah, that last episode really got the short end of the stick!
i can't wait to hear your extended thoughts on this series, and hopefully more of flanagan's work!! i felt it was tonally dissonant for different reasons than you did, and i actually think the episodes you liked the least scared me the most. i am an owner of a wonderful black cat myself so this along with the short story is my actual nightmare fuel, and while i think they fumbled the ball with the end of vic, i enjoyed the ride up until roderick came to see her. i hadn't even noticed her millions of animal facts, but to me it supports the idea that she's not really a god, or a human, or an animal, just some otherworldly being with an intense fascination with the aforementioned species. again, i can't wait to hear more of your thoughts; this is probably on the upper half of my flanagan ratings but i totally see what you loved and wanted more from in this show :)
I loved this series!! But at times it feels like we are watching two difference series with two separate scripts. I loved the dark serious tones in the interview scenes, but then we would go to scenes with the kids and it was full of random millennial/gen z- esque humor/jokes. It really took away from the series for me. But wow, I was blown away by the cinematography from start to finish. Leo usher was my fav and he truly sold it in his final scenes. Coming to the realization about truth w/ Pluto had me SHOOK! Amazing series! I would watch again for sure
I'm just glad someone else is acknowledging some of the things i noticed - it feels uneven, some of the comedy falls flat, and overall it's tonally so different from anything you expect from Flanagan. Which like, fair enough, maybe they like those things that i didn't - but the fact that nobody's even acknowledging it? I've seen a couple of "it's great, it's like Succession but you get to watch everyone die" but little acknowledgement of how distinct it feels from the other two house/manor Flanagan series, not even in a positive way! I DON'T think an artist should ever feel trapped by their previous work, but i do think it's fair to say that what he did in House of Usher doesn't play to his strengths the way the previous serieses did, in my opinion.
Yeah, I admit I was surprised to see such mostly universal praise for it. I still enjoyed it and I like that it seems like he was experimenting with new things, the results were just very mixed. I commend him for trying something new though! And sometimes when he got the tone just right it was on par with some of his best stuff, but other times - woof. 🤣
@@renrants exactly! I actually liked some of the things you called out as disliking - the more overtly upsetting and gory stuff with Mory and with Paolo (though I do think it sucks that they're both DV related and one of them does involve the only lesbian couple) - so I think I'm pretty willing to let him experiment, I just think a lot of it didn't work. I kept waiting for the kind of emotional gut punch you get with his work usually, but it never happened because I didn't feel a connection even to the "good" characters like Juno and Lenore. I've been toying with the idea of finally getting into video essays with one about House of Usher, and I'll definitely give you a shout out if I do - lots of interesting stuff in this video that I need to chew on more.
I always love hearing about stuff people liked that I didn't. I will say the stuff with Morrie was really well done, just so viscerally unpleasant and kind of mean spirited that I can hardly bring myself to watch it. I actually really liked Leonore, but she did feel a bit underdeveloped. Her ending was the closest we get to the emotional gut punch, but I agree it didn't really have the same weight as the revelations in his other series. If you do end up making a video I'd love to see it! :)
@@renrantsthis comment you make here, is scratching the itch I have with this series. I can't put my finger on it, but this one had an overall different feel. Flanagan has a skill for effectively adding layers to a character, where it hits me out of nowhere when they die that I felt loss. His usual works featured 2-3 deaths per season, that were focused on, and this felt like a speedrun. Had Flanagan actually made a show where he dedicated a season to each child that would die, I think he could have created something much more beautiful. The story of Perry the outsider could have been very beautiful, the descend into madness of Leo could have been more understandable, the only death that really hit me is Lenore, and that is because I did not see it coming.
I just COULD NOT with the Morella Usher scenes!! The entire arc with Frederick was just so OTTP awful and would have bad enough just denying her treatment at all.
Yeah, it was way too much for me, almost physically painful to watch 😭 and it felt so mean spirited too. The slightly happy ending she got felt like too little too late
i actually really loved it but i feel like you have to look at it not as an exact re-telling of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”- i don’t think it’s even comparable to any of flannagan’s past works. it’s a re-imagining of all of edgar allen poe’s short stories set in the background of the main story “The Fall of the House of Usher” which deviates from flannagan’s other works. I think the intricacies of each death and how it connects to a Poe short story was really unique and well done
this isn’t like a critique or anything just an observation i made! i thought this was a really well done analysis!! im also so happy someone is talking about the series i thought it was so cool!
I loved it for that purpose for sure! Bly Manor was actually similar in that it was based on The Turn of the Screw, but some or the individual episodes featured Henry James' short stories like The Beast in the Jungle, orThe Jolly Corner! I agree it's still pretty incomparable to his other series though, because it's just so different!
@@renrants that’s ALSO why i loved bly manor def one of my faves. i just think for this one he probably wanted to maybe deviate from the usual tone of his past works which like that’s the kinda vibe i got but i MIGHT be very wrong lol
@mushroomchixk no, I think you're right! I think he was experimenting a little here and some of it worked really well and some of it stumbled a bit, but either way I'm glad he tried something new
I like that it isn't a horror style series like Hill House. Each Episode is a retelling of Poe's more famed poems and his novel. Macabre, and dark, in tone. Sort of more of a thriller. Plus the comedy Juno introduced was hilarious. But that is because I am a Brit and we, generally, love that awkwardness.
I loved Camille and Leo ❤ the whole cast was great. I do have a bone to pick, though…during the party, when the red death approached Maureen, she told her to leave and that she wasn’t supposed to be there. However, at the end, when she’s speaking to Lenore, she explains that the tragedy was meant to happen so that she can go on and do all this amazing charity work in Lenore‘s name.
The final kick in the teeth was their graves. Roderick and Madeline in a row with Lenore, then all his children in a row beneath him. No matter what they did, how hard they tried, how much good or bad they brought into the world, dude kept playing favorites even after death and none of his children earned even half the love he had for his sister and granddaughter. Also a further insult to Lenore's mother who now has to walk past her abusive husband's grave to pay respects to her daughter and will be forced to be buried near her father in law and abusive ex if she wants to be laid to rest with her daughter. I know visually they did that to get a shot of all their graves for impact, but it's a kick in the teeth to see Lenore lumped in with all of them.
I thought this was so much better than his other series. I’m not a fan of hill house at all as I didn’t find it scary or compelling. HOU was poetic and dark. While not scary it was definitely gobsmacking gruesome. The lead actors smashed it as well. All of Lorraine’s dialogue was hypnotic and old Rodricks lemon monologue was a truly magnificent piece of writing.
That lemon monologue was so good. I wanted to include some of it in the video but I just couldn't justify cutting any of it 🤣 If you didn't like the Haunting series I can definitely see this one being more appealing. And again, I still really liked it, I just connected more with his other series if that makes sense
The adhd part of me loved it. Once it gets going, it’s creepy and gory. From a logical standpoint, I get the message. Greed makes monsters of us all. But how Verna handles the children is odd. She gives them gruesome deaths to match their bad character, but she also pushes them to act badly. Frederick was a mild mannered brown noser in the first ep but is suddenly a cruel sadist. Leo loved his sister and walked away from the family when they cruelly handled her death. But he becomes an animal killing oaf. Vic‘s nervous breakdown was turned into homicidal ambition. Tamerlanes insomnia was turned into paranoid rage. I dislike horror movies where the characters have no way out and that’s what this was.
That's really interesting! I didn't see it as Verna pushing then to act, for Freddie it seemed like the trigger was Morrie humiliating him by going to the party, and then he escalates it because he was entitled and cruel all along.. I do agree it felt like she helped push Vic, Leo, and Tamarlane over the edge, which is interesting because with both Perry and Camille she tried to protect them from the gruesome deaths they were headed towards and tried to get them to stop. And then with Freddie she definitely causes him to die a more horrible death than he had to specifically to punish him, whereas she was gentle with Lenore. It's really fascinating!
Frederick's first reaction to knowing that his wife was horribly maimed was not to lament her horrible fate, but get all insecure over what she was doing at her rich family's sex party. As Verna tells him in the end, it was his choice to take drugs and then take his wife home to torture her. Leo cared about his rich sister, but not about anyone else. He straight up implied he was ready to kill his boyfriend when he tried to tell him to stop taking so many drugs rather than cope with the loss properly. And his first reaction to being covered in blood and seeing the cat initially wasn't, "Oh God what the hell happened", it was almost annoyed, like he'd done it before. Vic was always ambitious to a homicidal degree, remember the monkeys and how tortured they felt. And even though hurting her girlfriend was an accident, it was Vic's choice to cover it up and let her die so that she could hold onto her money. She couldn't even tell her that she loved her. Verna was literally telling Tamerlane to calm down, just as her husband was, but she refused to listen to either of them and brought the insomnia and subsequent madness onto herself. She wanted to be the one to salvage her family's image, but in being so stubborn and against vulnerability with anyone she made it all worse. She admits to her own fault in the end. Don't get it twisted, their father and his sister had already doomed them, but all of them always had a choice to live and die better. That's one of the themes of the show.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Victorine's story cut cut up in editing? Everyone seems to feel that that part of the series is oddly patchy, and the story really is only half told. Based on Flanagan's previous work, that usually isn't his MO. Maybe we will get a directors cut one day.
A director's cut would be nice! I'm not actually sure which episodes he directed because it's been so long since I looked, and I know he didn't do all of them, but I think the reshoots definitely could have complicated things as well since they had to recast Roderick and it was a whole Thing ™️
At first I wondered why Annabel had what looks like a gun shot wound only in the back of her head only? then I wondered, was that symbolic for taking a bullet for her kids??
No because the torture of Morella was HORRENDOUS. It was so unnecessarily cruel. Flanagan could have established Frederick to be a vindictive shit without having him brutalize his helpless wife. I felt even ickier about it because it was a white man abusing a woman of color-I’m white myself, though, so I really want to hear what POC viewers felt about it and if I may be looking too far into it since I don’t have a relevant viewpoint.
It made me uncomfortable too, I also didn't like that her initial injury almost felt like punishment for her for going to the party. I found it to be needlessly mean spirited and I fast forwarded through it on subsequent viewings because it's just so horrid
I didn’t view it as a racial power play. Verna seems to manipulate the children to push them to their death (if they won’t go willingly) Vic, Tamerlane, and Leo especially. With Frederick, it wasn’t just the coke. Verna was manipulating his possessive rage. It’s what caused him to abuse her and what caused him to look for her ring, trapping himself in the house.
That's valid. I think I would still be uncomfortable with that kind of violence and abuse being depicted in a show with a tone like this no matter what the race of the victim was, it was just so unremittingly awful and it just went on and on, it already felt like overkill what happened to her at the party 😭
Weirdly for me, that scene was sone of the few that hit me, but I didn't feel were bad. I honestly disliked most of the show, it just felt like "Keeping Up With the Ushers" rather than a horror show. The framing device fell flat for me, the deaths all felt boring to watch (except Perry) and none of the character gave me any reason to watch (except Leonore, the obvious lamb and the new wife, the truly innocent). I actually liked Fredrick for the msot part because he was the only character I could even force myself to care about. I didn't like any of the other Ushers because they all ended up crossing lines I just couldn't handle. Weirdly, I liked the fact that Freddy got his revenge because I cannot excuse cheating, especially when the wife got every chance to not go. I don't think it's fair to her to rip out her teeth, but everything up to that, I was on his side. I just don't like watching shitty people, even if the whole point is to have them pay their dues. My opinion is, of course, my own and I am also not a person of color either, so I don't know if the skin colors matter a whole lot. I would also just like to say that I do like Poe's work, I think his poetry and short stories are great. I just didn't like the way it was all set up and used in the show
@@renrants HAHA! I always watch with subtitles, but it still took me almost a year. Gotta say though. I've not seen anyone else mention it, so Kudos to US :)
I don't think so, I did also give it a lot of praise for what it did well, I think it just could have used a little more finesse in some places. I still watched it several to many times and had a lot of fun with it
Hill House will always be my favorite! For me, I’d put Bly second and Usher third. I also actually enjoyed The Midnight Club and really wanted to see where that would go before it was canceled. Tbh, I wasn’t a huge fan of Midnight Mass. I got bored and it took me forever to finish it. I’ll say this was the most fun and the least scary of the bunch, even with the uneven tone and in your face societal commentary. I agree that it could have used a few more read throughs before the final draft.
I love Hillhouse and Bly as well. I also loved the Midnight Club, I was surprised so many people didn't like it. I liked Midnight Mass but it was ranked the lowest for me until The House of Usher came out, although I thought the ending was incredible.. Mike Flanagan did at least put a summary of what he had planned for The Midnight Club's second season on Tumblr, although of course it isn't the same.
I don't get the appeal, at least not from this video. I still don't have any idea what's going on in the plot or why I should care about any of it. Seems like a reference parade for Poe fans that doesn't really care about preserving any of his work, but rather using pieces of it to form a new mosiac, just to have something to sell. No thank you.
Clearly this wasn’t a labor of love for Flanagan, it was more an homage to Poe, to render his legacy accessible to a very post-modern audience - but the universal themes were well explored, and front and center to hazy noise and facile pablum that this channel doesn’t like. But I think it actually fits in with the tone and setting that crunches the two worlds together. This was hardly H house, B manor, or midnight mass (clearly Flanagan greatest masterpiece even if it isn’t the fan favorite). I applaud the channel for commenting on cringe narrative by Madeline during her poisoning at the end. But it wasn’t a tone killer, just another mask of performative piety at a time she was grasping to play the part of intimacy and meaning. I’m not surprised the far leftist didn’t grasp that because pathology is seldom self-aware. I think Roderick’s oxy wife was a bit flat as a character but her scene with Roderick that this channel calls a lifetime movie-type scene is just a naive take. It was a brilliant scene for anyone who understands the oxy epidemic, just how pernicious and mendacious it really was in creating a generation of heroin addicts who never did heroin - Calling him a monster and him saying I’m victor Frankenstein and you’re the monster was brilliant. And comparing oxy to the electric surge - it’s alive - hit on so many levels. It seems the issue is just too topical and inaccessible for this content creator, perhaps. But I am curious how this leftist channel views the larger issue of big Pharma, considering the macabre animal testing, like that done under Anthony Fauci and his lies about it, the lies about funding illegal research overseas to subvert the law, and lying about, and conspiring with the experts and bureaucrats to destroy the good faith people who revealed it, and of course lying about it. And the conspiracies and prima facie fraud in creating, testing, manufacturing, distributing and administering the vax, as well as the wicked actions taken to cover their ill effects by both CDC/HHS/WHO & Moderna/Pfizer. Can the left continue to slam Purdue Pharma and oxy and corrupt big corporations while defending Fauci and Covid inanity because it’s part of the hive mind programming? Or has enough time passed to tell the truth? Flanagan never shies from salient issues of the times (Catholic Church, big Pharma etc), but sharp viewers will notice he still forces acolytes of intransigent political narratives (on all sides) to face reality, even if it isn’t his intention - because truth is the gestalt quality of all great art, and it’s the foil to propaganda & indoctrination. Anyway, after the labor of love that was midnight mass, Flanagan just wanted to have some fun I think, but his genius shines through despite the sometimes messy fingerprints of probably Netflix and producers, regaled in chefs hats making messes in Mike’s kitchen. Because the few “cringe” moments were near identical to the worst moments in every big studio, Netflix, Amazon, HBO, etc. product forced fed by the very same cult of fraudster extortionists who likely can’t decide whether the resentment and rage flowing from their jealousy of true artists and talent, meets or exceeds their animus and disgust for everything they have yet to successfully subvert, but finally they’ve failed. They tried doing art without artists and only propagandists, it didn’t go well. It almost wrecked Netflix, it’s cost marvel, Star Wars, or let’s just say all of Disney, billions and billions of dollars (and their reputation, respect and dignity and so much more. In Bob Iger’s case, a winning image was all about timing, knowing when to leave. Then he returned and walked directly into the maelstrom he created and left to devour Bob chapek. Maybe Flanagan was just writing a story about the very parasitism and ideological poison of these very companies
i really did not like lenore's acting. it really just was the same face in every single episode. i had no idea what she felt. shock, horror, contempt, confusion?!?!
I didn't mind it, but she did feel a bit understated compared to the others, I can see how he roerformance wouldn't work for everyone, especially with some of the standouts that steal every scene
Spoiler: Nobody likes a 'girl boss'. They don't even like themselves. They're always miserable. It's not something to be praised or glorified. Even Flanagan knows this.
@@renrants Me too. My comment wasn't directed at you or your review, by the way. Just a trope I've noticed a lot lately and it seems to influence a lot of young ladies only for them to find out the hard way that it leads to a tough, stressful and lonely life for many of them.
I think I am one of the minority here, but I really did not like this adaptation at all and felt like there were too many Mike Flannaganisms that put me off and work in detriment to the original character of Edgar Allen Poe's writing. For one I did not find this series dark or scary enough, despite how gory some scenes were, they felt lackluster somehow. I blame this on the tone as well as you have mentioned, but also on what seemed to me a very superficial reading of Poe's work when it comes to themes and motifs. Although the cast is great, I felt like this series was bloated with characters that seemed half baked just so we can get a reference to a short story and their deaths barely seemed to impact how the story progressed as well. In general it felt too inconsequential. I also did not like Verna as the main baddie and that is mainly because she left me unconvinced in her role as the vengeful spirit, and felt that she was too explained. The Usher twins were the best constructed part out of the whole cast and that is mainly because they both had strong characterizations that made sense in and out of the adaptation, and I feel that Flanagan needed to go in the implied taboo nature of their relationship to really flesh out their deep depravity and rot, a theme that is strong in the original short story. But what really made it bad for me, narrative choices aside is how preachy I found this series to be, and that is not to say that the point its making is bad quite the opposite we desperately need proper condemnation of certain forms of capitalism and corporate greed to be portrayed in media but this series felt like it was just telling me how bad all these people were instead of showing me, and that last monologue felt like overkill in preachiness. Almost like a caricature of a deep theme. All the consequences aside, I did not feel the brutality of the payback and instead felt like I was watching some bizarre version of The Christmas Carol. Edgar Allen Poe is a brutal but poetic writer and this series was just so defanged and sort of cheap but parlaying itself as something profound. Although in all honesty I felt the same with Bly Manor so maybe the problem is me. lol.
Thanks for this great analysis on some of the problems with the series. I personally loved Bly Manor, but I'm a sucker for a queer Gothic romance. I totally agree about the preachiness feeling off putting, and it saturated some entire themes like the Ligodone stuff, a lot of which was so clumsy 😅
i think where i differ here is that i didn't really view Verna as intended to be a "baddie" or a "vengeful spirit". if anything, i viewed her more as an unpredictable neutral/god-like entity with her own morals and a deep interest in testing human nature, so i actually really liked her character. i've seen people even view her as the devil but i don't think what she is that simple. she doesn't gain or lose anything from making deals with bad people or orchestrate the deaths that she does, so it didn't feel like she was there to be villain. if anything, i just viewed her as a really harsh lesson that is required by humanity because we keep fucking up. if anyone was the villain to me, it was "powerful men". or maybe just "power" as a whole. i do agree though that the story itself is pretty flat. i honestly guessed the entire plot from episode one so i only really watched the whole show to see how the story would take us there. i think after watching Hill House, Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass, ive just accepted that Mike Flanagan is prone to writing very poetic and monologuey dialogue that doesn't mimic the way real people talk. so ive kinda started ignoring whenever his dialogue starts to feel preachy or long-winded because i expect it atp. but i definitely think that trait of his caused this show to falter in some places more than his others. Madeline's monologue in the last episode especially comes to mind. it all felt almost out of character for her to say as her last words in the story-her last words to Roderick-and it definitely completely took me out of any immersion i had. as for the characters overall, i think pretty much everyone except for Roderick, Madeline, Verna, and Dupin were all VERY flat characters but-in my opinion-that makes sense for the specific story Flanagan was trying to tell here because I don't think we're really supposed to care about the Ushers. therefore, we don't really care about their deaths-we just care about WHY, which is the only real mystery of the narrative and what keeps you watching until the end. they all purposely suck as people and lack depth because of the deal Roderick & Madeline made with Verna. the Usher children could have really had any characterizations at all and it most likely wouldn't have changed the overall story much because it's intentionally NOT a character-driven story. instead, the story is simply about human nature and greed. Verna never would have appeared to Madeline & Roderick had they gone with Dupin's plan in 1979 and had they not killed Rufus Griswold. their original greed sealed all their fates, and that's all that really matters about the Ushers in the end. the common thread running through the story is that greed only leads to more greed, which only leads to ruin. if Mr.LongFellow hadn't been greedy and cheated on his wife with his secretary and knocked her up with twins, he wouldn't have been killed by her in the end and the Ushers never would've existed. and none of this entire story would've ever happened. that's why when Roderick begins telling the entire story to both Dupin and to viewers, he starts there. unfortunately, i do feel like focusing less on the characters in the writing led to some reliance on cliche character tropes for characters that would've benefitted from more depth, like Roderick's first wife Annabel being a perfect, morally-just wife and mother without much other defining characteristics, or Rufus Griswold being just a powerful man that sucked in every way possible (which is also why i guessed in the first episode that Madeline & Roderick had killed him the night they met Verna-because there was zero ambiguity there, really). i'm not that attached to Edgar Allen Poe so i can't say i particularly care how well this lives up to being an adaptation of his writing, but having read The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven, i can definitely see what you mean by the tone not being super Poe-esque. whether that helps or hurts the show, i can't say. i will say, some of the implementations of Poe's actual writing in the show felt out-of-place to me, like if a character had broken out in song. overall, the show would've greatly benefited from more narrative depth and less hand-holding, but i think the less hand-holding part might also just be something Mike Flanagan needs to work on in general as a writer lol
This is truly wonderful analysis, thank you so much for sharing! I agree I don't really see Verna as a vengeful spirit or the devil, to me she felt like something even more ancient and ambiguous. I definitely think there was a certain neutrality to Verna, especially in the almost apologetic way she approached some of the deaths, including Lenore's and Perry's, even trying to warn them away so they could die in less awful ways. I can see why some people think she's the devil given the way she does seem to have an element of temptation to how she operates, but it feels like there's more to her than that. I've seen people say she's death, and I don't think she's that either, although she is reminiscent of Death in The Sandman in some ways. You're definitely right about the connection between Verna appearing to them and their choice to Cask of Amantillado poor old Griswold 😂 Personally I felt like Poe's writing was used in fun and creative ways as a jumping off point. A lot of Poe's writing contains some absurd elements that I think Flanagan was right to dispense with. Like in Murders in the Rue Morgue, the killer is a loose orangutan with a straight razor 😂😂 That said, there truly is a wild amount of Poe references visual and otherwise scattered throughout, and I'm glad he didn't go the route of straight adaptation. The fall of the house of usher is a very short story and there isn't a lot to it, it really wouldn't be able to sustain a whole series on its own, it's barely got enough going on for a movie. Another friend pointed out a lot of Flanagan’s writing in his other series had a poe-like cadence to it as well, and I agree you're right that much of his writing feels more like poetry than things a person would actually say, especially when they're doing one of their profound monologues. I love the monologuing most of the time, but in the other series it was mostly about death and loss and feelings here, there was a sort of glibness that undercut a lot of that sense of wonder you get in his other work. I really like your analysis about the intentional flatness of Flanagan’s characters in this series! I think you're totally right that it's very intentional and fits with the idea that Roderick has made all of his children empty. One thing that struck me about the ending is how small how house of Usher looks lined up as tombstones, all of their greatness and finery, all their power, gone. I think Flanagan is definitely prone to a little "having the characters spell it out for you" it just felt exceptionally clunky here where the other series had more moments of subtlety or ambiguity, especially in their build up.
I think this was one of Flanagan's weaker shows from the writing perspective. His usual subtlety wasn't there. but it has some really beautiful moments and I didn’t mind some of the humor, but the heavy-handedness of the preaching was very distracting from my enjoyment of the show.
Totally agree, it definitely had its moments and was miles ahead of a lot of other writers, but my expectations for Flanagan are just SO high after loving pretty much everything he's made
I don't know who is going to read this, if anyone but The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is a 1838 novel by Edgar Allan Poe. The nazis weren't a thing until, at BEST 1925, so yeah it aged fine, just because idiot bigots took an idea shouldn't diminish the original thing.
I'd love to hear more about why you liked it so much! I love Mike Flanagan, but as I said in the video, this series felt very uneven to me, it had some moments I'd consider his best writing and some I'd consider some of his worst, but overall I still enjoyed it. But I'm always interested in opinions that differ from mine. Sometimes people pick up on details I missed that recintextualizes something I initially didn't respond to, for example.
This show was so weird 😂 and i think uneven is the best word to describe it. The first episode is unbearable imo the acting and writing in this was unnatural and hard to follow it starts to feel normal around EP 3. The diversity was too much and at times takes you out of the story cause you're like wait so why is Vic a seemingly fully black woman? For instance. And also maybe i missed it but was the mom actually dead ? And if not why did she kill the dad ? And how exactly does that tie into everything else ? Madeline was definitely more likeable than Roderick i like the subtleties in how the character is written and how she doesnt have kids as a nod to the deal they made.... seems shes thoughtful afterall. Pym was a well written character. Hes little arc stuck with me long after i watched the show also the idea that he saw Verna on one of his expeditions is so interesting. It was a 50/50 for me, i wish it was left a little more ambiguous. Midnight Mass is better imo
funnily enough, despite the silly puppet cat, i found Leo’s death one of the most harrowing. something about his unbridled descent into rage really had my heart pumping. i really wish they had spent more time with Vic. i think the writers underestimated what a cruel character she was. she tortured and killed tons of animals in her ambition, and was willing to condemn an innocent woman to possible death with her experimental trial. i think she really got out easy for what she had done, and her story deserved a lot more build up.
I totally agree about vic! Some more build up would have helped a lot.
I think the build up for Leo's death was really good, the imagery was just so silly it undercut the horror of it for me. The poor boyfriend though! I felt terrible for him
Agree!
I felt the complete opposite about the jokes/comedy aspect. I thought it was a PERFECT depiction of what people this rich are actually like. They’re immature, raunchy, almost downright goofy because they are so removed from reality. I think of The Sponsors from Squid games. They spend their whole time in screen cracking jokes and making sexual innuendos. I felt it fit each character perfectly when it happened And added a fun bit of levity almost reminding you “these are not good people, you can find humor in their death”
That's an excellent point! There were definitely some jokes that did land for me, I think it just felt a bit like tonal whiplash sometimes and that took me out of the darker and more lofty parts of the story a bit.
I absolutely love the way Bruce Greenwood delivers Roderick's lines, he's so perfectly glib
I want to cry every time I even think about Lenore's death and the story Verna told her. It's the most tragically beautiful scene in the whole show
Oh man, such endless ugly crying
Frederick's death was my favourite scene, and not just because of the vindication i felt because of what he did to morrie. Verna's hints of another life (which i wish was explored more), the time spent just watching the pendulum swing, the entire detail of him dying with his pants half down. It was a brilliant scene
It was definitely well done, perfect mix of empathy and inevitability
Though this isn't my favourite series Flanagan has done, it has fascinated me the most. I think it's the most complicated in terms of multiple timelines merging into their inevitable consequences, and it could have easily become a mess in the wrong hands. Somehow the story managed to stay grounded, anchored by the framing device of Auggie and Roderick. At multiple time during my first viewing, I found myself very impressed with the acting, directing, writing and editing skill on display. However, that did take me out of the story as well. I wasn't as invested in the characters as I was with past Flanagan series.
Yeah, it still had a ton of stuff to like about it for sure!
I felt this this one was a lot more straightforward than the others, the only real mystery is WHY everything is happening, but it felt kind of like a spoiler for the show to show us all the kids were dead, right off the bat. I wish they’d left more mystery there. I get that it’s a story about how the Usher family fell, it’s literally the name of the show, but it didn’t leave much for you to wonder about. It felt more like you were checking off boxes as the characters died, and there was no real reason to get attached to the characters in any way because you knew they were about to die. It was a good show still, I’ll definitely rewatch it once enough time passes, but it felt like watching an old movie you already knew the ending to, but not how they got to that end, if that makes sense
I love how Madeline was the “boss in the shadow” and even her screen time reflects that
Yeah, I don't think Roderick would have ever killed Griswold alone 😅
@@renrants- I agree. I know we are all responsible for ourselves but he let her lead him. Once Annabel left he really went astray….. so sad. He also sacrificed his kids!!.. Madeline didn’t have kids… the best choice
@thebarky1988 it's wild how many kids Roderick had with that hanging over their heads 🤣
The funny thing is at 5:28, she gets it wrong about cats. They aren't "apex predators" because cats also have natural predators of their own.
Fitzgerald and Segal are the two actors who take this from an intriguing story to a brilliant season of television. I LOVED both their portrayals. Tina and Toby also took their demotions from main characters in Midnight Club in good stride as they killed it as Segal’s assistants. The one aspect of the series that I felt really held it back was the writing for Vic. I feel like the writers absolutely WASTED a chance to better adapt “Telltale Heart”. They could’ve taken a much more literal interpretation, and Vic’s madness comes out of nowhere. She was clearly obsessive from episode one but she never indicated she’d come unhinged in minutes and stab herself. That could’ve been better.
I totally agree, especially about the writing for Vic. And T'Nia Miller does the best she can with the writing, but it just feels so incredibly weak, especially compared to the stronger episodes
I totally agree with this analysis. Especially the Vic character. It felt like they did an incredible disservice to an amazing actor who deserved the same quality of storytelling as the other characters. But I also really loved it, overall.
I agree on the tone, I feel like a lot of the horror was lost on me on account of both flat jokes and a bit of an overreliance on jumpscares. I was really impressed with the ending of Perry's episode (and yes you're right, that must have taken a pile of money to make). It was in my opinion one of the most terrible deaths along with Lenore's, mostly because it felt like a direct consequence of the family's cruelty.
The rest though, I don't know, it didn't hit me as hard. The last episode especially, truly last-minute-halloween visuals; perhaps it would have been better if they hadn't shown Madeline at all in the end, nothing scarier than one's own imagination I suppose.
Anyway, great vid!
Yeah, the jokes just didn't work for me and I totally agree about the jump scares.
Perry's death was so grotesque it was impressive. I also love that it was foreshadowed when one of the lawyers he wasn't listening to mentioned some of the pollution was highly acidic.
Poor Lenore had me crying like a baby 😭 and poor Morrie losing her.
I wonder if the visuals at the end were better before the reshoots, because it was so cheesy looking I have a hard time believing that was always the vision for that scene 🤣🤣
@@renrants yeaaahh, about Perry’s death, when they first mentioned the sprinklers I guessed something of the sort might happen, but I never imagined they would show it on screen in such a graphic way, it was truly haunting.
The scene with Lenore really got to me too. I’d been a little skeptic of the more emotional side of the series by that point, but that conversation was just heartbreaking. God I love Carla Gugino so much!
And yeah, that last episode really got the short end of the stick!
i can't wait to hear your extended thoughts on this series, and hopefully more of flanagan's work!! i felt it was tonally dissonant for different reasons than you did, and i actually think the episodes you liked the least scared me the most. i am an owner of a wonderful black cat myself so this along with the short story is my actual nightmare fuel, and while i think they fumbled the ball with the end of vic, i enjoyed the ride up until roderick came to see her. i hadn't even noticed her millions of animal facts, but to me it supports the idea that she's not really a god, or a human, or an animal, just some otherworldly being with an intense fascination with the aforementioned species. again, i can't wait to hear more of your thoughts; this is probably on the upper half of my flanagan ratings but i totally see what you loved and wanted more from in this show :)
I loved this series!! But at times it feels like we are watching two difference series with two separate scripts. I loved the dark serious tones in the interview scenes, but then we would go to scenes with the kids and it was full of random millennial/gen z- esque humor/jokes. It really took away from the series for me. But wow, I was blown away by the cinematography from start to finish. Leo usher was my fav and he truly sold it in his final scenes. Coming to the realization about truth w/ Pluto had me SHOOK! Amazing series! I would watch again for sure
Yeah, it was very strange how some of it was so good and some of it was so bad 😂
Leo was so endearing, I love Rahul Kohli
I'm just glad someone else is acknowledging some of the things i noticed - it feels uneven, some of the comedy falls flat, and overall it's tonally so different from anything you expect from Flanagan. Which like, fair enough, maybe they like those things that i didn't - but the fact that nobody's even acknowledging it? I've seen a couple of "it's great, it's like Succession but you get to watch everyone die" but little acknowledgement of how distinct it feels from the other two house/manor Flanagan series, not even in a positive way! I DON'T think an artist should ever feel trapped by their previous work, but i do think it's fair to say that what he did in House of Usher doesn't play to his strengths the way the previous serieses did, in my opinion.
Yeah, I admit I was surprised to see such mostly universal praise for it. I still enjoyed it and I like that it seems like he was experimenting with new things, the results were just very mixed.
I commend him for trying something new though! And sometimes when he got the tone just right it was on par with some of his best stuff, but other times - woof. 🤣
@@renrants exactly! I actually liked some of the things you called out as disliking - the more overtly upsetting and gory stuff with Mory and with Paolo (though I do think it sucks that they're both DV related and one of them does involve the only lesbian couple) - so I think I'm pretty willing to let him experiment, I just think a lot of it didn't work. I kept waiting for the kind of emotional gut punch you get with his work usually, but it never happened because I didn't feel a connection even to the "good" characters like Juno and Lenore. I've been toying with the idea of finally getting into video essays with one about House of Usher, and I'll definitely give you a shout out if I do - lots of interesting stuff in this video that I need to chew on more.
I always love hearing about stuff people liked that I didn't. I will say the stuff with Morrie was really well done, just so viscerally unpleasant and kind of mean spirited that I can hardly bring myself to watch it.
I actually really liked Leonore, but she did feel a bit underdeveloped. Her ending was the closest we get to the emotional gut punch, but I agree it didn't really have the same weight as the revelations in his other series.
If you do end up making a video I'd love to see it! :)
@@renrantsthis comment you make here, is scratching the itch I have with this series.
I can't put my finger on it, but this one had an overall different feel. Flanagan has a skill for effectively adding layers to a character, where it hits me out of nowhere when they die that I felt loss.
His usual works featured 2-3 deaths per season, that were focused on, and this felt like a speedrun.
Had Flanagan actually made a show where he dedicated a season to each child that would die, I think he could have created something much more beautiful.
The story of Perry the outsider could have been very beautiful, the descend into madness of Leo could have been more understandable, the only death that really hit me is Lenore, and that is because I did not see it coming.
This feels different than Flanagan's other work because it focuses SO much on body horror, which is very true to Poe.
That's a great observation
I loved this series so much. I think it’s because I love Poe and he was able to weave so many short stories, poems and his one novel into the series….
Definitely! There were so many little references!
I just COULD NOT with the Morella Usher scenes!! The entire arc with Frederick was just so OTTP awful and would have bad enough just denying her treatment at all.
Yeah, it was way too much for me, almost physically painful to watch 😭 and it felt so mean spirited too. The slightly happy ending she got felt like too little too late
Greeeeeat review@@renrants! You hit all the points I couldn't articulate and other reviewers didn't seem to mind.
Thank you so much! That means a lot to me ❤️
i actually really loved it but i feel like you have to look at it not as an exact re-telling of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”- i don’t think it’s even comparable to any of flannagan’s past works. it’s a re-imagining of all of edgar allen poe’s short stories set in the background of the main story “The Fall of the House of Usher” which deviates from flannagan’s other works. I think the intricacies of each death and how it connects to a Poe short story was really unique and well done
this isn’t like a critique or anything just an observation i made! i thought this was a really well done analysis!! im also so happy someone is talking about the series i thought it was so cool!
I loved it for that purpose for sure! Bly Manor was actually similar in that it was based on The Turn of the Screw, but some or the individual episodes featured Henry James' short stories like The Beast in the Jungle, orThe Jolly Corner!
I agree it's still pretty incomparable to his other series though, because it's just so different!
@@renrants that’s ALSO why i loved bly manor def one of my faves. i just think for this one he probably wanted to maybe deviate from the usual tone of his past works which like that’s the kinda vibe i got but i MIGHT be very wrong lol
@mushroomchixk no, I think you're right! I think he was experimenting a little here and some of it worked really well and some of it stumbled a bit, but either way I'm glad he tried something new
I like that it isn't a horror style series like Hill House. Each Episode is a retelling of Poe's more famed poems and his novel. Macabre, and dark, in tone. Sort of more of a thriller. Plus the comedy Juno introduced was hilarious. But that is because I am a Brit and we, generally, love that awkwardness.
Can you do a deep dive on midnight mass? Same actors
I'd love to, that show was incredible! I'll add it to the list :)
I loved Camille and Leo ❤ the whole cast was great. I do have a bone to pick, though…during the party, when the red death approached Maureen, she told her to leave and that she wasn’t supposed to be there. However, at the end, when she’s speaking to Lenore, she explains that the tragedy was meant to happen so that she can go on and do all this amazing charity work in Lenore‘s name.
Oh wow that's a good point!
I think she meant that Lenore's tragic death was meant to happen because it was her collecting on the deal made by Roderick?
The final kick in the teeth was their graves. Roderick and Madeline in a row with Lenore, then all his children in a row beneath him. No matter what they did, how hard they tried, how much good or bad they brought into the world, dude kept playing favorites even after death and none of his children earned even half the love he had for his sister and granddaughter.
Also a further insult to Lenore's mother who now has to walk past her abusive husband's grave to pay respects to her daughter and will be forced to be buried near her father in law and abusive ex if she wants to be laid to rest with her daughter. I know visually they did that to get a shot of all their graves for impact, but it's a kick in the teeth to see Lenore lumped in with all of them.
Oh wow that's a great point I didn't consider!
I thought this was so much better than his other series. I’m not a fan of hill house at all as I didn’t find it scary or compelling. HOU was poetic and dark. While not scary it was definitely gobsmacking gruesome. The lead actors smashed it as well. All of Lorraine’s dialogue was hypnotic and old Rodricks lemon monologue was a truly magnificent piece of writing.
That lemon monologue was so good. I wanted to include some of it in the video but I just couldn't justify cutting any of it 🤣
If you didn't like the Haunting series I can definitely see this one being more appealing. And again, I still really liked it, I just connected more with his other series if that makes sense
The adhd part of me loved it. Once it gets going, it’s creepy and gory. From a logical standpoint, I get the message. Greed makes monsters of us all.
But how Verna handles the children is odd. She gives them gruesome deaths to match their bad character, but she also pushes them to act badly.
Frederick was a mild mannered brown noser in the first ep but is suddenly a cruel sadist. Leo loved his sister and walked away from the family when they cruelly handled her death. But he becomes an animal killing oaf.
Vic‘s nervous breakdown was turned into homicidal ambition. Tamerlanes insomnia was turned into paranoid rage.
I dislike horror movies where the characters have no way out and that’s what this was.
That's really interesting!
I didn't see it as Verna pushing then to act, for Freddie it seemed like the trigger was Morrie humiliating him by going to the party, and then he escalates it because he was entitled and cruel all along..
I do agree it felt like she helped push Vic, Leo, and Tamarlane over the edge, which is interesting because with both Perry and Camille she tried to protect them from the gruesome deaths they were headed towards and tried to get them to stop. And then with Freddie she definitely causes him to die a more horrible death than he had to specifically to punish him, whereas she was gentle with Lenore.
It's really fascinating!
Frederick's first reaction to knowing that his wife was horribly maimed was not to lament her horrible fate, but get all insecure over what she was doing at her rich family's sex party. As Verna tells him in the end, it was his choice to take drugs and then take his wife home to torture her.
Leo cared about his rich sister, but not about anyone else. He straight up implied he was ready to kill his boyfriend when he tried to tell him to stop taking so many drugs rather than cope with the loss properly. And his first reaction to being covered in blood and seeing the cat initially wasn't, "Oh God what the hell happened", it was almost annoyed, like he'd done it before.
Vic was always ambitious to a homicidal degree, remember the monkeys and how tortured they felt. And even though hurting her girlfriend was an accident, it was Vic's choice to cover it up and let her die so that she could hold onto her money. She couldn't even tell her that she loved her.
Verna was literally telling Tamerlane to calm down, just as her husband was, but she refused to listen to either of them and brought the insomnia and subsequent madness onto herself. She wanted to be the one to salvage her family's image, but in being so stubborn and against vulnerability with anyone she made it all worse. She admits to her own fault in the end.
Don't get it twisted, their father and his sister had already doomed them, but all of them always had a choice to live and die better. That's one of the themes of the show.
@victoriapulcifer6218 well said!
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if Victorine's story cut cut up in editing? Everyone seems to feel that that part of the series is oddly patchy, and the story really is only half told. Based on Flanagan's previous work, that usually isn't his MO. Maybe we will get a directors cut one day.
A director's cut would be nice! I'm not actually sure which episodes he directed because it's been so long since I looked, and I know he didn't do all of them, but I think the reshoots definitely could have complicated things as well since they had to recast Roderick and it was a whole Thing ™️
Verna, Roderick and Madeline are the most fascinating characters in this series. Carlo Gugino's delivery was shiveringly masterful.
Totally agree!
At first I wondered why Annabel had what looks like a gun shot wound only in the back of her head only? then I wondered, was that symbolic for taking a bullet for her kids??
I think it was both symbolic and a literal depiction of an implied death by intentional gunshot wound because she couldn't live without her kids 😭
No because the torture of Morella was HORRENDOUS. It was so unnecessarily cruel. Flanagan could have established Frederick to be a vindictive shit without having him brutalize his helpless wife. I felt even ickier about it because it was a white man abusing a woman of color-I’m white myself, though, so I really want to hear what POC viewers felt about it and if I may be looking too far into it since I don’t have a relevant viewpoint.
It made me uncomfortable too, I also didn't like that her initial injury almost felt like punishment for her for going to the party.
I found it to be needlessly mean spirited and I fast forwarded through it on subsequent viewings because it's just so horrid
I didn’t view it as a racial power play. Verna seems to manipulate the children to push them to their death (if they won’t go willingly) Vic, Tamerlane, and Leo especially. With Frederick, it wasn’t just the coke. Verna was manipulating his possessive rage. It’s what caused him to abuse her and what caused him to look for her ring, trapping himself in the house.
That's valid.
I think I would still be uncomfortable with that kind of violence and abuse being depicted in a show with a tone like this no matter what the race of the victim was, it was just so unremittingly awful and it just went on and on, it already felt like overkill what happened to her at the party 😭
Weirdly for me, that scene was sone of the few that hit me, but I didn't feel were bad.
I honestly disliked most of the show, it just felt like "Keeping Up With the Ushers" rather than a horror show. The framing device fell flat for me, the deaths all felt boring to watch (except Perry) and none of the character gave me any reason to watch (except Leonore, the obvious lamb and the new wife, the truly innocent).
I actually liked Fredrick for the msot part because he was the only character I could even force myself to care about. I didn't like any of the other Ushers because they all ended up crossing lines I just couldn't handle.
Weirdly, I liked the fact that Freddy got his revenge because I cannot excuse cheating, especially when the wife got every chance to not go.
I don't think it's fair to her to rip out her teeth, but everything up to that, I was on his side.
I just don't like watching shitty people, even if the whole point is to have them pay their dues.
My opinion is, of course, my own and I am also not a person of color either, so I don't know if the skin colors matter a whole lot.
I would also just like to say that I do like Poe's work, I think his poetry and short stories are great. I just didn't like the way it was all set up and used in the show
Appreciate your honesty on this masterpiece of a series. That is in my liked videos on Netflix
It's definitely got a lot to like about it for sure too though! :) I definitely understand why for some folks it's their favorite thing he's made.
This was a great watch with points I hadn’t considered!
Thank you so much ❤️
Watch doctor sleep its amazing and make sure its the 3 hour version its one of his best work
Ooh I've been meaning to check it out!! I liked his prequel to Ouija a lot better than the movie it was based on 😂
An anagram for Verna...? Oh, I get it! Thanks, Ren. Once again, that one went right over my head until you pointed it out. Duh! I should've known.
Obsessive rewatching helps 🤣
It took me WAY too long to realize Verna's anagram! D'oh!
I only noticed eventually because I watch with the captions on, if I didn't see it written down I wouldn't have picked up on it 😅
@@renrants HAHA! I always watch with subtitles, but it still took me almost a year. Gotta say though. I've not seen anyone else mention it, so Kudos to US :)
*insert MC Lars "Mr. Raven"*
Willa was a total standout, I leaned forward to watch her no matter what she was doing on screen
She was so entirely captivating!
Sounds like you were reviewing it based off what you expected/hoped it would be rather than what it is 🧐
I don't think so, I did also give it a lot of praise for what it did well, I think it just could have used a little more finesse in some places. I still watched it several to many times and had a lot of fun with it
Ohhh I disagree, I thought this was a RIDE! After the sloooowww burn of Bly manor and midnight mass this was great I thought.
I'm glad you liked it! I do think it's the most fun of his series, the tone just felt a bit uneven for me 😅
Hill House will always be my favorite! For me, I’d put Bly second and Usher third. I also actually enjoyed The Midnight Club and really wanted to see where that would go before it was canceled. Tbh, I wasn’t a huge fan of Midnight Mass. I got bored and it took me forever to finish it. I’ll say this was the most fun and the least scary of the bunch, even with the uneven tone and in your face societal commentary. I agree that it could have used a few more read throughs before the final draft.
I love Hillhouse and Bly as well. I also loved the Midnight Club, I was surprised so many people didn't like it. I liked Midnight Mass but it was ranked the lowest for me until The House of Usher came out, although I thought the ending was incredible..
Mike Flanagan did at least put a summary of what he had planned for The Midnight Club's second season on
Tumblr, although of course it isn't the same.
I don't get the appeal, at least not from this video. I still don't have any idea what's going on in the plot or why I should care about any of it. Seems like a reference parade for Poe fans that doesn't really care about preserving any of his work, but rather using pieces of it to form a new mosiac, just to have something to sell. No thank you.
Clearly this wasn’t a labor of love for Flanagan, it was more an homage to Poe, to render his legacy accessible to a very post-modern audience - but the universal themes were well explored, and front and center to hazy noise and facile pablum that this channel doesn’t like. But I think it actually fits in with the tone and setting that crunches the two worlds together. This was hardly H house, B manor, or midnight mass (clearly Flanagan greatest masterpiece even if it isn’t the fan favorite). I applaud the channel for commenting on cringe narrative by Madeline during her poisoning at the end. But it wasn’t a tone killer, just another mask of performative piety at a time she was grasping to play the part of intimacy and meaning. I’m not surprised the far leftist didn’t grasp that because pathology is seldom self-aware. I think Roderick’s oxy wife was a bit flat as a character but her scene with Roderick that this channel calls a lifetime movie-type scene is just a naive take. It was a brilliant scene for anyone who understands the oxy epidemic, just how pernicious and mendacious it really was in creating a generation of heroin addicts who never did heroin - Calling him a monster and him saying I’m victor Frankenstein and you’re the monster was brilliant. And comparing oxy to the electric surge - it’s alive - hit on so many levels. It seems the issue is just too topical and inaccessible for this content creator, perhaps. But I am curious how this leftist channel views the larger issue of big Pharma, considering the macabre animal testing, like that done under Anthony Fauci and his lies about it, the lies about funding illegal research overseas to subvert the law, and lying about, and conspiring with the experts and bureaucrats to destroy the good faith people who revealed it, and of course lying about it. And the conspiracies and prima facie fraud in creating, testing, manufacturing, distributing and administering the vax, as well as the wicked actions taken to cover their ill effects by both CDC/HHS/WHO & Moderna/Pfizer. Can the left continue to slam Purdue Pharma and oxy and corrupt big corporations while defending Fauci and Covid inanity because it’s part of the hive mind programming? Or has enough time passed to tell the truth? Flanagan never shies from salient issues of the times (Catholic Church, big Pharma etc), but sharp viewers will notice he still forces acolytes of intransigent political narratives (on all sides) to face reality, even if it isn’t his intention - because truth is the gestalt quality of all great art, and it’s the foil to propaganda & indoctrination. Anyway, after the labor of love that was midnight mass, Flanagan just wanted to have some fun I think, but his genius shines through despite the sometimes messy fingerprints of probably Netflix and producers, regaled in chefs hats making messes in Mike’s kitchen. Because the few “cringe” moments were near identical to the worst moments in every big studio, Netflix, Amazon, HBO, etc. product forced fed by the very same cult of fraudster extortionists who likely can’t decide whether the resentment and rage flowing from their jealousy of true artists and talent, meets or exceeds their animus and disgust for everything they have yet to successfully subvert, but finally they’ve failed. They tried doing art without artists and only propagandists, it didn’t go well. It almost wrecked Netflix, it’s cost marvel, Star Wars, or let’s just say all of Disney, billions and billions of dollars (and their reputation, respect and dignity and so much more. In Bob Iger’s case, a winning image was all about timing, knowing when to leave. Then he returned and walked directly into the maelstrom he created and left to devour Bob chapek. Maybe Flanagan was just writing a story about the very parasitism and ideological poison of these very companies
i really did not like lenore's acting. it really just was the same face in every single episode. i had no idea what she felt. shock, horror, contempt, confusion?!?!
I didn't mind it, but she did feel a bit understated compared to the others, I can see how he roerformance wouldn't work for everyone, especially with some of the standouts that steal every scene
Spoiler: Nobody likes a 'girl boss'. They don't even like themselves. They're always miserable. It's not something to be praised or glorified. Even Flanagan knows this.
Oh, for sure, capitalism gonna capitalism. It's just a trope that I don't like 😅
@@renrants Me too. My comment wasn't directed at you or your review, by the way. Just a trope I've noticed a lot lately and it seems to influence a lot of young ladies only for them to find out the hard way that it leads to a tough, stressful and lonely life for many of them.
Yeah, it's interesting how it's framed. And the juxtaposition between Anabel and Madeline felt almost like it was admonishing her, very weird vibes
Yeah how dare women strive surpass the glass ceiling
@@billiegray9109 Nobody implied anything like that. Get a grip on your emotions.
Mary and Bruce are powerhouse and Mary should be on the Residence
i loved it so much I'm making my in laws watch it with me! after binging it for a second time with my husband!
I'm glad you liked it! On subsequent watch throughs there are so many little details!
Oh god they made female Hank Green a character in a horror series?!
They really did 😂😂😂
I think I am one of the minority here, but I really did not like this adaptation at all and felt like there were too many Mike Flannaganisms that put me off and work in detriment to the original character of Edgar Allen Poe's writing. For one I did not find this series dark or scary enough, despite how gory some scenes were, they felt lackluster somehow. I blame this on the tone as well as you have mentioned, but also on what seemed to me a very superficial reading of Poe's work when it comes to themes and motifs. Although the cast is great, I felt like this series was bloated with characters that seemed half baked just so we can get a reference to a short story and their deaths barely seemed to impact how the story progressed as well. In general it felt too inconsequential. I also did not like Verna as the main baddie and that is mainly because she left me unconvinced in her role as the vengeful spirit, and felt that she was too explained. The Usher twins were the best constructed part out of the whole cast and that is mainly because they both had strong characterizations that made sense in and out of the adaptation, and I feel that Flanagan needed to go in the implied taboo nature of their relationship to really flesh out their deep depravity and rot, a theme that is strong in the original short story.
But what really made it bad for me, narrative choices aside is how preachy I found this series to be, and that is not to say that the point its making is bad quite the opposite we desperately need proper condemnation of certain forms of capitalism and corporate greed to be portrayed in media but this series felt like it was just telling me how bad all these people were instead of showing me, and that last monologue felt like overkill in preachiness. Almost like a caricature of a deep theme. All the consequences aside, I did not feel the brutality of the payback and instead felt like I was watching some bizarre version of The Christmas Carol. Edgar Allen Poe is a brutal but poetic writer and this series was just so defanged and sort of cheap but parlaying itself as something profound.
Although in all honesty I felt the same with Bly Manor so maybe the problem is me. lol.
Thanks for this great analysis on some of the problems with the series.
I personally loved Bly Manor, but I'm a sucker for a queer Gothic romance.
I totally agree about the preachiness feeling off putting, and it saturated some entire themes like the Ligodone stuff, a lot of which was so clumsy 😅
i think where i differ here is that i didn't really view Verna as intended to be a "baddie" or a "vengeful spirit". if anything, i viewed her more as an unpredictable neutral/god-like entity with her own morals and a deep interest in testing human nature, so i actually really liked her character. i've seen people even view her as the devil but i don't think what she is that simple. she doesn't gain or lose anything from making deals with bad people or orchestrate the deaths that she does, so it didn't feel like she was there to be villain. if anything, i just viewed her as a really harsh lesson that is required by humanity because we keep fucking up. if anyone was the villain to me, it was "powerful men". or maybe just "power" as a whole.
i do agree though that the story itself is pretty flat. i honestly guessed the entire plot from episode one so i only really watched the whole show to see how the story would take us there. i think after watching Hill House, Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass, ive just accepted that Mike Flanagan is prone to writing very poetic and monologuey dialogue that doesn't mimic the way real people talk. so ive kinda started ignoring whenever his dialogue starts to feel preachy or long-winded because i expect it atp. but i definitely think that trait of his caused this show to falter in some places more than his others. Madeline's monologue in the last episode especially comes to mind. it all felt almost out of character for her to say as her last words in the story-her last words to Roderick-and it definitely completely took me out of any immersion i had.
as for the characters overall, i think pretty much everyone except for Roderick, Madeline, Verna, and Dupin were all VERY flat characters but-in my opinion-that makes sense for the specific story Flanagan was trying to tell here because I don't think we're really supposed to care about the Ushers. therefore, we don't really care about their deaths-we just care about WHY, which is the only real mystery of the narrative and what keeps you watching until the end. they all purposely suck as people and lack depth because of the deal Roderick & Madeline made with Verna. the Usher children could have really had any characterizations at all and it most likely wouldn't have changed the overall story much because it's intentionally NOT a character-driven story. instead, the story is simply about human nature and greed. Verna never would have appeared to Madeline & Roderick had they gone with Dupin's plan in 1979 and had they not killed Rufus Griswold. their original greed sealed all their fates, and that's all that really matters about the Ushers in the end. the common thread running through the story is that greed only leads to more greed, which only leads to ruin. if Mr.LongFellow hadn't been greedy and cheated on his wife with his secretary and knocked her up with twins, he wouldn't have been killed by her in the end and the Ushers never would've existed. and none of this entire story would've ever happened. that's why when Roderick begins telling the entire story to both Dupin and to viewers, he starts there.
unfortunately, i do feel like focusing less on the characters in the writing led to some reliance on cliche character tropes for characters that would've benefitted from more depth, like Roderick's first wife Annabel being a perfect, morally-just wife and mother without much other defining characteristics, or Rufus Griswold being just a powerful man that sucked in every way possible (which is also why i guessed in the first episode that Madeline & Roderick had killed him the night they met Verna-because there was zero ambiguity there, really).
i'm not that attached to Edgar Allen Poe so i can't say i particularly care how well this lives up to being an adaptation of his writing, but having read The Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven, i can definitely see what you mean by the tone not being super Poe-esque. whether that helps or hurts the show, i can't say. i will say, some of the implementations of Poe's actual writing in the show felt out-of-place to me, like if a character had broken out in song.
overall, the show would've greatly benefited from more narrative depth and less hand-holding, but i think the less hand-holding part might also just be something Mike Flanagan needs to work on in general as a writer lol
This is truly wonderful analysis, thank you so much for sharing!
I agree I don't really see Verna as a vengeful spirit or the devil, to me she felt like something even more ancient and ambiguous.
I definitely think there was a certain neutrality to Verna, especially in the almost apologetic way she approached some of the deaths, including Lenore's and Perry's, even trying to warn them away so they could die in less awful ways.
I can see why some people think she's the devil given the way she does seem to have an element of temptation to how she operates, but it feels like there's more to her than that.
I've seen people say she's death, and I don't think she's that either, although she is reminiscent of Death in The Sandman in some ways.
You're definitely right about the connection between Verna appearing to them and their choice to Cask of Amantillado poor old Griswold 😂
Personally I felt like Poe's writing was used in fun and creative ways as a jumping off point. A lot of Poe's writing contains some absurd elements that I think Flanagan was right to dispense with. Like in Murders in the Rue Morgue, the killer is a loose orangutan with a straight razor 😂😂
That said, there truly is a wild amount of Poe references visual and otherwise scattered throughout, and I'm glad he didn't go the route of straight adaptation. The fall of the house of usher is a very short story and there isn't a lot to it, it really wouldn't be able to sustain a whole series on its own, it's barely got enough going on for a movie.
Another friend pointed out a lot of Flanagan’s writing in his other series had a poe-like cadence to it as well, and I agree you're right that much of his writing feels more like poetry than things a person would actually say, especially when they're doing one of their profound monologues. I love the monologuing most of the time, but in the other series it was mostly about death and loss and feelings here, there was a sort of glibness that undercut a lot of that sense of wonder you get in his other work.
I really like your analysis about the intentional flatness of Flanagan’s characters in this series! I think you're totally right that it's very intentional and fits with the idea that Roderick has made all of his children empty.
One thing that struck me about the ending is how small how house of Usher looks lined up as tombstones, all of their greatness and finery, all their power, gone.
I think Flanagan is definitely prone to a little "having the characters spell it out for you" it just felt exceptionally clunky here where the other series had more moments of subtlety or ambiguity, especially in their build up.
I think this was one of Flanagan's weaker shows from the writing perspective. His usual subtlety wasn't there.
but it has some really beautiful moments and I didn’t mind some of the humor, but the heavy-handedness of the preaching was very distracting from my enjoyment of the show.
Totally agree, it definitely had its moments and was miles ahead of a lot of other writers, but my expectations for Flanagan are just SO high after loving pretty much everything he's made
I don't know who is going to read this, if anyone but The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is a 1838 novel by Edgar Allan Poe. The nazis weren't a thing until, at BEST 1925, so yeah it aged fine, just because idiot bigots took an idea shouldn't diminish the original thing.
Ridiculous, this was the best series ever.
I'd love to hear more about why you liked it so much!
I love Mike Flanagan, but as I said in the video, this series felt very uneven to me, it had some moments I'd consider his best writing and some I'd consider some of his worst, but overall I still enjoyed it.
But I'm always interested in opinions that differ from mine. Sometimes people pick up on details I missed that recintextualizes something I initially didn't respond to, for example.
This show was so weird 😂 and i think uneven is the best word to describe it. The first episode is unbearable imo the acting and writing in this was unnatural and hard to follow it starts to feel normal around EP 3. The diversity was too much and at times takes you out of the story cause you're like wait so why is Vic a seemingly fully black woman? For instance. And also maybe i missed it but was the mom actually dead ? And if not why did she kill the dad ? And how exactly does that tie into everything else ?
Madeline was definitely more likeable than Roderick i like the subtleties in how the character is written and how she doesnt have kids as a nod to the deal they made.... seems shes thoughtful afterall.
Pym was a well written character. Hes little arc stuck with me long after i watched the show also the idea that he saw Verna on one of his expeditions is so interesting.
It was a 50/50 for me, i wish it was left a little more ambiguous. Midnight Mass is better imo