Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor based on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw

Been there. Done that. And better.

Fuck you, Deb. At least I have an Oscar.

Yea - I see the beautiful Martin McCreadie (The Five) is listed in the IMDB credits. I hope he is in a gay storyline with Oliver Jackson-Cohen!

R1 stole my thunder, I was going to say "just watch The Innocents".

The Innocents is one of my favorite movies. But I will also give this series a viewing, because I really liked what they did with The Haunting of Hill House.

Maybe people would like to watch something modern instead of a 60 year old movie.

Oooooh spooky dolls

OJC looks gorgeous

The image with the dolls says "Look closely." What am I supposed to be seeing?

An anvil, a bell, a flower, a cat, a necklace, a magnifying glass, a hat and a statue, Rose.

Since both the film and the series are set in the 19th Century, what difference does it make if the film is 60 years old?

It's a great film, but there's nothing wrong with a modern remake.

And honestly, most people in 2020 aren't going to watch something that old. That's just the way it is.

[quote]The image with the dolls says "Look closely." What am I supposed to be seeing?

I don't see anything unless that's a ghost behind the doll on the far left.

Stretching the story of The Turn of the Screw into eight episodes (or more?) sounds tricky, to put it mildly. But I've seen most of Flanagan's work and enjoyed it all, so I'm in.

Another shit show from the director who made the comatose The Haunting of Hill House . MEH!

They've updated it to modern day so they could do diversity casting.

It's hard to imagine getting a series out of the story unless Flanagan got drawn into "explaining" everything, which doesn't sound like a good idea.

It'll be interesting to see how he handles this. Haunting Of Hill House's worst parts were the supernatural ones. If they had eliminated the "We have to go back to Hill House" bullshit and had just made it a drama about how a traumatic experience affects a group of people in the long run it would have been perfect.

Haunting Of Hill House worked not because it was a ghost story, but because it was a family drama with paranormal shit in the background. Hopefully they don't lose that and focus too much on the supernatural shit for Season 2.

I'm also glad that they didn't recast the actors and actresses. Aside from the hot dude who was in Game Of Thrones, every single person in that cast was insanely talented and displayed amazing range throughout the series. The actors are kind of what made the series work, if it had gotten a less talented cast it would have been a flop.

[quote]Stretching the story of The Turn of the Screw into eight episodes (or more?) sounds tricky, to put it mildly.

Flanagan has stated in interviews that The Turn of the Screw is just one of the stories covered in season 2. It's a combination of several stories.

Person, man, woman, camera, TV, R9.

The BBC did an adaptation of The Turn Of the Screw about ten years ago with Michelle Dockery and Dan Stevens. They altered the story and it the whole production was quite lacking.

English pop star Patsy Kensit was in an adaptation as well.

I think the "look closely" might have been meant for the poster, which has (not so) hidden faces.

The weirdest thing about the basement photo is the fucked up shadow of the central figure.

The Innocents is my favorite horror movie and The Haunting of Hill House is my favorite horror show, so my expectations are so high that they’re probably impossible to meet.

Valerie Bertinelli was in an adaptation as well.

Obviously she was whom Henry James was thinking of when he wrote the original story.

Didn't they also just release a poorly received modern remake earlier this year called The Turning?

Yes, R27, it starred the kid from Stranger Things that isn't the cute one and the dead-eyed Mackenzie Davis. It's fucking awful.

[quote]After a quick look, we’d suggest examining behind the creepy toys and checking in the back right corner.

Under the wooden butter churn next to the vacuum cleaner. You have to zoom in to see it.

~R13

I don't see it

Bergman did an early TV version, it is a little melodramatic with background music that could be out of Dark Shadows, but interesting. I am guessing there is not a good complete version of this production.

Face under butter churn -- it's a very J-Horror looking face, white with black eyes

Flanagan is directing? Oh fuck. So that means that the film/ series will likely have nothing to do with the original story. The Haunting of Hill House was one of the worst bait and switch turds I've ever seen. He clearly either never read the book by Shirley Jackson or just didn't give a shit. He will probably turn it into another cheesy family melodrama.

LOL R33, did you just not read ANY spoilers or synopses before watching the first series? It was very obviously a "re-imagining" and they never hid that. Hell, the title card synopsis on Netflix should've given it away that it wasn't really an adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel at all.

This also isn't going to be a direct adaptation of Turn of The Screw. In fact, there are characters, like Rahul Kohli's, that are from other Henry James novels. It will probably be an amalgam of elements from the books with the story going in different directions. God forbid not everything cater to the purists.

R34 So why on Earth would they link Flanagan's silly little family melodrama to Shirley Jacksons' book at all? Why give the characters the same names and call it The Haunting of Hill House if there is absolutely no relation to the themes of the Jackson book? He should have called it Mike Flanagan's Haunted House Family Melodrama. He didn't have to remake it word for word but one would expect him to at least capture some of the psychological elements of the novel and 1963 film. Flanagan sucks.

The show has dialog directly from the book, the house "character" is the same, the storm in the sixth episode, a few of the characters, Theo being gay, Nell being the most susceptible to the house and having her increasingly suicidal due to it, were all from the book... Did you sit through the entire 10 episode season seething about how much it wasn't a verbatim interpretation? At what point did you realize it wasn't, since the synopsis didn't tip you off? Internet purists are so fascinating and funny to me. What a thing to get enraged about.

People who've seen Bly Manor have said that it's a masterpiece and far exceeds Hill House.

Flanagan is one of the more interesting horror filmmakers out there right now. I've at least liked everything he's done. Some I've even loved and thought they were every bit as great as some of the classics from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. I'll give him a chance on this. It truly can't be worse than any other Turn of the Screw adaptation that isn't The Innocents.

I would rather see The Haunting of Blythe Danner.

R37, to anyone's knowledge the only people who have seen Bly Manor yet are the cast and crew who got copies of the first few finished episodes, which some of them posted about on social media, so yes, I'm sure they like it very much.

I like Flanagan's work a lot too, but to horror fans who just want to see tons of mindless gore, hysterical screaming women, jump scares, and swimsuit models of both genders being systematically disemboweled, I can see why his style is no fun.

ANOTHER Turning of the Screw remake?!

We just had one in January! Screw this.

Is the lead going to be an unreliable narrator? Looks like she drinks like a fish.

How far will they go with the intimations of sexual abuse of the children by the spirits? It is the crux of the story because it leads to the terrible ending and all the questions...

The Haunting of Hill House didn’t work at all!

It was a miserable, family soap opera with incoherent and inconsequential supernatural cutaways.

It had nothing to do with the original novel or The Haunting (1963) and it completely shit the bed.

I don’t need another shitshow remake of a story I’ve seen several times already.

ENOUGH.

All these eldergays claiming the story could use a modern update just go to show how out-of-touch the senior citizens here really are.

They have no clue that Finn Wolfhard just did it.

I’m enraged because the Haunting of Hill House was a complete waste of my time. It kept teasing that it might get better or develop the horror in a meaningful way, but it never did.

I will only check this new show out if it gets above a 90% approval from critics.

Are you retarded R12?

r44 that wasn't a real adaptation.

r46 you're not going to have droves of people watching a movie made sixty fucking years ago. I'm not saying that's right, that's just the way it is.

"They already made a movie about this, it's sixty years old, let's put THAT on Netflix instead!"

If DLers were in charge of Netflix, it would be out of business in a fucking week.

[quote]They have no clue that Finn Wolfhard just did it.

Right, but we mean a modern version that's NOT unwatchably atrocious.

Mike Flanagan's track record boasts something mostly shit shows. It should have dawned on him by now that he doesn't have a knack for horror films. Did he suck socks or present hole to get to make these shit movies? High rating on IMDB, but actually dead boring and dull and predictable.

2019 Doctor Sleep

2018 The Haunting of Hill House (TV Series)

2017 Gerald's Game

2016 Ouija: Origin of Evil

2016 Before I Wake

2016 Hush

2013 Oculus

2011 Absentia

"suck socks" = "suck cocks"

Hill House was entertaining up to the last episode, which sucked; I love "The Innocents", though I hope by dragging the "Turn of the Screw" story out to 8 episodes, they don't dilute the story to the point that it's no longer coherent, which I kind of think is what happened with HH.

Hush was good. Oculus was also good. Flanagan must have had something fucked up happen to him when he was a kid and it interrupted his family, because like 90% of his stories are about traumatic events destroying a family and giving the children of said family lifelong mental illness.

The Pareidolia of Bly Manor

I read they put ghosts and clues about the plot in the little girl's dollhouse. I LOVE creepy dolls/dollhouses so I'm looking forward to that, at least.

I like that Flanagan bases his horror films on real human issues and grounds them in reality. It's refreshing and reminds me of people like Wes Craven and George Romero. I'm a big fan and think he's the best thing to happen to horror in awhile. He and Ari Aster both. I believe we're living in a great time for the horror genre. Much better than the 10/15 years previously. There were a few decent ones during that time, but not many. It was mostly remakes and found footage movies.

*kisses doll*

What makes the story work is the fact that you see it from the governess' perspective - leading the reader (and the viewer in the 1960s film version) to wonder whether the ghosts are all in her head or not.

BTW, there was an adaptation of Screw in the mid-1070s starring Lynn Redgrave & directed by Dan Curtis.

It didn't work.

I've always wondered why this ghost story was called "The Turn of the Screw." Anybody have an explanation for that?

The title could be a reference to the governess, who may be wound a little too tightly as her stay at the mansion goes on. (It's more than likely she sexually repressed.)

R60 The title was taken from a popular expression used in the 19th century. It means "an action that makes a bad situation worse, or a bad situation becoming slowly worse". The Governess experiences more and more turns of the screw as the story goes on.

More dykes having sex meanwhile gays are nowhere to be seen. PASS.

R63 are you lost?

Although the Amelia Eve groundskeeper Jamie character is definitely a lesbian.

KISSES DOLL!

A date! October 9th.

The Hotness.

As with all things OJC has been in, it doesn't have nearly enough OJC.

OMG! The haunting creepy lullaby from The Innocents was written specifically for the movie -- and they have appropriated for this TV series.

The director has excellent taste. I think I'm going to like this show.

Trailer

Loved T’Nia Miller from Years And Years! Looking forward to this!!

R71 she looks really great in this trailer. I wish it told us a little more about what it's actually about, though.

T'Nia Miller is consistently named as a standout, but it's getting very, very lukewarm reviews so far.

Does OJC get naked at all in this?

I’m still excited for it.

I'm going to watch it, but I'm prepared for the fact that it sounds like it's not actually horror. It's just a "gothic" ghost-story romance.

Henry Thomas's alcoholism has aged him horribly.

SPOILERS...

It is the same main theme as the last "Haunting:" spirits trapped in a house that need to be released.

Artfully made, but really more treacle than terror in the end.

I'd like them to make a sophisticated straight ghost/horror story next time round but I suspect they simply don't have the interest (or guts?) to do it.

No offense R78 but if anyone can't figure out that a show whose naming syntax is "The Haunting of [House Name]" is going to have trapped ghosts haunting the house every season then I don't know what to tell you. The producers already said they'd probably follow a similar formula with different themes and characters for however many seasons the show gets.

R79 If its spirits trapped in a house that eventually works itself out through the power of love/family that wouldn't be a different themes. It is the same theme. With similar characters.

Why does it have to be trapped spirits? Why does it always have to get treacly and sad?

Why does it have to be "if you've seen one Haunting season, you've seen them all?"

Ironically most of the reviews are saying they don't like how radically different this season is from first. They don't have much in common to me except that they're both about people dealing with ghosts haunting a house, but even the ghosts are different this season. A shame there's no technically impressive episode this time around like that continuous take episode in S1 though.

What a snoozefest that was. Just finished it.

I also just finished it and it really was so boring. I felt like it could've been at least 2 episodes shorter, if not more. Did we really need THREE episodes explaining how being "tucked away" worked?

Unless it's better than The Innocents (not very likely), I think I'll tune out.

Not better, and not even thematically close. In fact, Henry James' novel had darker and more disturbing concepts than this incredibly loose adaptation. It ends going so far from the source material the only things in common are places and names.

I hate it when the title is scarier than anything in the series. I'll have to watch The Others again to see "scary children" done properly.

So after drunkenly watching part of this last night (probably have to rewatch parts) may I surmise that almost everyone in the house is really dead?

Woman staying at Rose Red with Grace Jones and playing nanny to a couple of disturbed kids sums it up.

This sucks. Hate Ryan Murphy all you want, but Ratched is a huge hit and spellbinding/captivating. C list cast doesn’t help his misguided affair either. Hard pass.

I watched the whole thing in 2 days. After the 1st 2 episodes I wanted to quit just because it was so dull, and the main character so annoying, but it got better as it went along. The 5th episode was confusing as hell with the bald black housekeeper constantly finding herself back in the kitchen interviewing the man who was applying for the chef job but in the end it all came together quite brilliantly.

The 8th episode (the origins of the haunting) was genuinely creepy, and generally origins stories aren't all that interesting, but this one was. "And she slept, and forgot, and waked and walked" (something like that) over and over for hundreds of years until she forgot herself.

The last episode was satisfying. Not too exciting but it was nice to see the characters years later.

The main character (the governess), whom I'd initially found so annoying, actually turned out to be likeable. She was so weak, so tentative that I just wanted to shake her, but that was part of the character, and she grew quite a bit. Many of the characters did.

Still don't understand what the final shot was about.

The ending made me cry.

It was very mournful and sad and seemed to be a lot more about loss and grieving. The fifth and eighth episodes were the best. There was a bit of Netflix bloat. The showrunner’s weird obsession with lesbianism (but don’t touch gay men, no homo bro!) is very off putting and seems to be there like his first series as a titillation and for him to get off to straight female actresses making out. Very much the male gaze. He needs to let it go. It’s creepy.

Bailed after 2 episodes. Boring AF.

Started off interesting and creepy, but became way too overweight and drawn out for me with very little scary content.

R92 I hadn't realized it, but there is lesbianism and no gay male content in every single one of Mike Flanagan's works. There was even some in Doctor Sleep (granted, it was in the source material too) but it got cut. His current wife is openly bisexual and has been before she met him, so maybe it's for her somehow, but it is a bit much.

R94 Same. I was really looking forward to a spooky series but this feels more like a time-travel soap opera. I’ll finish it just since I’ve invested in several episodes but it is so drab.

It was decent but it was no Hill House. A lot of good moments but some of it felt undercooked despite the overlong run time.

I thought Carla Gugino could do no wrong until I heard that accent. She made Henry Thomas sound good.

It was amusing that Ye Olde Flashbackes were in black and white, as if they had black and white film in Ye Olde Times.

I am more than ready for Flanagan to include a love story between two men.

[quote] It was amusing that Ye Olde Flashbackes were in black and white, as if they had black and white film in Ye Olde Times.

Hahahaha. Yes. Agreed about Gugino and Eliot doing Brit accents. I mean, no.

I don't have a good ear for Scottish accents but I'm told OJC's accent was pants too.

[quote]I don't have a good ear for Scottish accents but I'm told OJC's accent was pants too.

It was. When I see people saying he did well with it, I just have to believe they have never heard a Scot speak.

Way too overwrought*

Episode 5 ripped off The Queen episode of season one of Castle Rock.

The Haunting of Hill House was totally overrated. It had some decent scary moments stuffed with way too much Lifetime movie melodrama to stretch out the 10 episodes. I'm passing on this one.

I wonder if CG’s strange accent choice is because she’s playing a character who naturally speaks with a Northern accent, but who for some reason is putting on a fairly RP-ish accent. Was it intentional for her accent to keep slipping and bits of Northern to slip through, to hint to her real identity?

What was the point of the character having a totally different accent later in life anyway?

Young Jamie's northern accent was the best fake accent (in real life the actress is quite middle class) but it wasn't all that great either, and I have no idea what midwestern mess Dani was going for, but by far the worst attempt at an accent was Kate Siegel's Viola, who sounded like that Madonna era when she was trying to be British.

Was there any point to having these accents anyway? You could have told the exact same story in America and not have to change a single thing about the story.

Clearly Gugino was doing a Vermont accent.

And Pedretti's accent was a tribute to Joan Cusack in Addams Family Values.

Nobody even noticed Kohli was doing a Ukrainian accent.

So many layers to the onion!

Agree that the accents were bad. All in all I didn’t like the series. The whole episode on Viola and her sister was so boring and in general things were dragging too long.

I have a theory that the show is actually set in America, and that Old Jamie was lying about it being in England for some reason (the way she changed Flora’s name and admitted there wasn’t a Bly Manor in England). Everything we see is what Jamie is telling us and she’s an unreliable narrator. Could possibly explain some of the “mistakes” and why the show feels so un-English?

Apparently this season was based onother Henry James stories, not just The Turn Of The Screw. Any ideas?

When I studied TTOTS in uni the professor said if you took a non-supernatural reading of the text, suggested thinking of the main character in terms of Louise Woodward, the British au pair who killed a baby.

It was primarily based on Turn of the Screw but they tried to interweave other stories of his. For example, the 8th episode was a retelling of A Romance of Certain Old Clothes, and Henry's doppleganger episode was inspired by The Jolly Corner, and both the names Owen and Wingrave were shout-outs to, well, Owen Wingrave.

I've only read Turn of the Screw. I have an anthology of James ghost stories somewhere that I've never got around to. It would be interesting to finally read it and rewatch the series. Except right now I have no desire to rewatch it.

I didn't realize that the actress who played Perdita was Poppy in season one.

Thanks r110

I actually meant to watch Hill House first, but this was ok.

The plague doctor is the real-life brother of the stand-in actress they used for the lady of the lake scenes. Kate Siegel was only on set for episodes 8 and her one scene in episode 9.

It was dreadful. It could have been told in 3 or 4 parts. Not scary and above all BORING. Did we need an hour of the black maid going thru the same scenes over and over? That whole episode could have been condensed to 15 minutes. I feel like I was rick rolled into watching a horror show that turned out to be a DYKE love story. Next season OJC better get it on with a guy or I won’t be watching.

The hour of the black maid going through the same scenes was the best episode of the season only because Rahul Kohli and that actress, T'Nia Miller, who is gay in real life, sold it and made each scene a little different from the last in ways that raised the stakes. Everything that was good about this season came from the performances, not the writing. Totally agree it could have been 4 or 5 episodes tops. That black and white episode was pure corn.

The maid episode was clearly trying to be this seasons “Bent Neck Lady” (which was also episode 5) but it fell flat for me. It wasn’t as clever or well written and didn’t pack anywhere near the emotional punch that BNL did. The actress did a great job, wasn’t her fault, but I didn’t care about her character enough.

Hill House is a tough act to follow and this was a miss for me.

Maybe Flanagan just didn't have his eye on the ball. Spread too thin maybe. He directed every episode of Hill House but only one ep of Bly.

Bly had different writers too.

I still hope for a third season. Yes, give OJC a nice gay love story please. Pair him up with Rahul Kohli or add someone new to the stable.

Loved Rahul Kohli. Hope he’s in next season, whatever that is. The ghost stories of Charles Dickens or MR James? Did they do haunted houses?

Rahul Kohli has a part in Flanagan’s upcoming series.

It might not be a good fit for this series, but I would be interested to see Flanagan tackle Lovecraft. His penchant for family drama and the supernatural as metaphor would be suited to The Shadow Over Innsmouth or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward or maybe The Dunwich Horror.

I don't read much horror so that's all I got.

R114 And to the poster complaining that Flanagan is a obsessed with lesbian themes for the male gaze: if you actually pay attention, this is a same-sex relationship that develops over time, not sex-filled eye candy for straight men. The show doesn’t even show them having sex, but has many scenes of them talking together and building up to a romance like a true love story.

And what’s wrong with that being part of the story? I swear, some of you gay men are so averse to women and have so little empathy that you can’t just imagine what it’s like being in love, regardless of the gender of the people. If it’s not gay men, you complain and then use offensive terms to describe the women for no reason. Humans have an amazing ability to put themselves in other people’s shoes and imagine what it would be like to feel certain things in life. You should use it sometime rather than blasting a show simply for having a lesbian relationship.

I'm non-corporeal!

Now to the show itself: season 1 had more traditional horror elements combined with family drama and suspense and was more of a nail-biter near the end. This Bly season has mostly drama, romance, and mystery elements with just a hint of suspense and horror.

Also, whoever writes this show likes to tie things neatly into a bow so to speak, and gets a little heavy handed with the dialogue in both seasons, I noticed. It’s almost as though one of the writers from the sappy “This Is Us” show got pulled in for some of the emotional scenes.

Kate Seigel’s accent was the worst by far, and it’s really unfortunate that much of the cast were trying on accents for the show rather than speaking normally (but then you’d have to have a fully British cast and drop some of the season 1 mainstays). It was an interesting creative choice.

That said, I enjoyed Bly and the first season, but for different reasons. And I really thought that T’Nia Miller stole the show this season when she had scenes—she was great. Overall, reasonably well-written and most enjoyable for the character development/relational themes.

Alex Essoe, the woman who played the children's mother and who was also Wendy Torrance in Mike Flanagan's Doctor Sleep, was outed as a lesbian yesterday by an ex-girlfriend on TikTok posting photos of their past relationship. Does Mike Flanagan hire any straight people anymore? It really warms the cockles of my gay little heart.

[quote]Does Mike Flanagan hire any straight people anymore?

He hires lots of us!

Is Rahul gay?

LOL R125! Forgot about that one raging heterosexual pussyhound.

Rahul makes a lot of jokes about being bisexual but he makes a lot of jokes about a lot of things and thinks he's being edgy. He's also recently admitted he enjoys both men and women flirting with him, but he could just be an attention whore like every other actor in existence.

Kohli has a girlfriend....in England.

^ I get that

R128 They broke up ages ago I thought. He's been living in Vancouver for over a year now and he's only been back a couple of times to visit his mother and posts a lot about being all alone.

Kohli was molested.

[quote]Kohli was molested.

Did he and Oliver Jackson-Cohen trade notes?

Rahul Kohli triggering some white women

[quote]Oh and remember white women... when you make jokes about minorities, you’re still punching down. You’re still second on the food chain.

When Flora was being dragged out of the house by the nanny to get away, but then pulled back and started calling out for her possessed brother, I understood the DL obsession with wanting to give someone a vicious slapping. Slapping that little urchin would have been simply splendid.

I found it dull, but then I found the Haunting of Hill House dull too so I wasn't expecting much.

As with all Netflix shows it's a six episode series stretched out, and it's padded with endless repeated sequences that go and on and on. None of the characters are really sympathetic, the main character is kind of a bitch and then a hysterical mess, then we get straight man lesbians (I'm sure the gardener is their idea of what butch looks like).

The accents are fucking awful, and every scene in "England" that isn't at Bly Manor follows the Murder She Wrote formula of filming in clearly American streets but with strategically placed taxis and red buses - given Netflix budgets, it's a little disappointing. The set design is also peculiarly American, with those paneled doors that only exist in California, giant skirting boards, over paneled walls, etc. But as you know, paneled walls = England. I don't see what the point of setting it in the UK is when the story would have worked just as well set in the US as the first show was.

Was the doppelganger ever explained?

It was shot in Canada, R135.

The American streets you see are in Vancouver.

Well I'm sure there's a huge difference between American and Canadian architecture.

There is, and that's why Canadian productions are so easily recognizable still, but I agree that the story could've taken place in Peru for all the difference the half-assed Britishisms made to the plot.

The doppleganger plot was an entire waste of an episode. It's just Henry Wingrave's guilty conscience about having fucked his brother's wife and his brother disowning him over it; there was nothing supernatural about it.

OT but this thread is dying anyway...last night I watched Flanagan's Ouija: Origins of Evil. It was a pretty standard haunted house movie, though well done for what it was. The highlight for me was Lulu Wilson, who played young Shirley in Hill House. She has a bigger role in this and she's very good at being creepy af. Of course Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas and Elizabeth Reaser are also in it.

I'll probably watch Absentia some time this week.

Absentia's quite good.

I quite liked Oculus, too. He's not exactly a horror master, but if you like his style of horror filmmaking, Flanagan has a pretty satisfying body of work.

I watched Absentia. I liked the idea more than the execution. It definitely suffered a bit from its low budget. Not sure I would recommend it.

[quote]He's not exactly a horror master

Yeah, I've now seen all his work and I'm not sure he's done anything truly great. It's frustrating actually, he's super talented but it feels like he hasn't hit his full potential. To be fair though I should probably rewatch some of the movies. I appreciated Hill House more the second time. Hill House is definitely his best IMHO.

Next up will probably be Crimson Peak. What are all y'all watching for Halloween?

I couldn’t resist watching The Craft for some quintessential 90s fashions and teenage witchery; this is Fairuza Balk’s best movie (Return to Oz coming in a close second), although not particularly scary. This whole month I’ve been watching cult classics and also late 90s stuff (Friday the 13th, Screams, I know what you did last summer, etc.) for nostalgia since I grew up during that decade. But maybe it’s time to watch Carrie again—that one is a great classic.

Somehow I've never seen The Craft. I'll add it to the list.

Last night I watched The Frighteners. Should have gone with Crimson Peak. It wasn't just bad, it was perplexingly bad. Like "how can they take this great idea and write this awful script" bad. And "how did Peter Jackson get a big budget trilogy after this" bad. Dee Wallace and Jeffrey Combs are delightful in this movie which just makes it all the more disappointing. I watched the director's cut, maybe the theatrical would be better.

I also listened to a few eps of a podcast called Horror Queers, which I enjoyed. It's two gay(?) guys, often with a guest host, discussing scary movies. Looks like there are episodes on Hush and Bly Manor.

Horror Queers sounds like a podcast that checks off several boxes for me, thanks for the rec R145.

I'm checking out His House tonight because I've heard it was genuinely scary. Seconding the rec for Crimson Peak. Ironically, several reviewers have compared Bly Manor unfavorably to it.

[quote] I quite liked Oculus, too.

Beware of Oculus... [italic]The Mirror That Kills![/italic]

Flanagan likes to work with the same actors...he should throw a bone to DL favorite Brenton Thwaites!

Fun Oculus trivia: Oliver Jackson-Cohen was on the final short list for the role that ultimately went to Brenton Thwaites in "Oculus." It's how he first met Mike Flanagan and how he ultimately got cast in "Hill House." Flanagan said on the DVD commentary for Hill House that Brenton had better brother chemistry with Karen Gillan but that he had always wanted to work with Oliver after that.

R124 I want to know more about this. Any links?

Too bad people won't look at something like The Innocents because it's 60 years old. It's probably the greatest haunted house/ ghost story film ever made. The gorgeous b/w cinematography by Freddie Francis demonstrates that style is content. Remember the original Rosemary's Baby(1968) and Boys in the Band (1970) are infinitely superior to the remakes.

Thwaites was dull in OCULUS, and Gillan was just OK. The actors who played the parents and the young version of Gillan's character were much better.

True - Thwaites is pleasant to look at but he isn’t much of an actor.

I had to suffer through this because my bf wanted to watch it. So fucking boring.

Just watched it and it was quite pleasant. Not much horror. Family drama just like Haunting of Hill House.

[quote] Still don't understand what the final shot was about.

I know that this comment was made ages ago, but just in case ... notice the hand in the lower right corner. It isn't the hand of the old gardener.

It was so slow. Couldn't watch past the 5th episode. Everyone dead.

Sounds like it's been quietly axed a la Mindhunter: the creator and/or Netflix lost interest and moved on to other projects.

I was so disappointed.

Not mad about the cancellation, just hope he remembers OJC and T'Nia Miller next time he's casting because according to imdb they aren't in Midnight Mass. imdb also says his next projects are a TV show called The Midnight Club that sounds like a creepy anthology show ("The Midnight Club follows a group of five terminally ill patients at Rotterdam Home, who begin to gather together at midnight to share scary stories." ) and a Shining prequel centered on Dick Halloran.

Can't find a release date for Midnight Mass but it's in post so hopefully soon.