We Have Always Lived In The Castle

I haven’t seen the movie but the book is terrific.

I’ve seen the film and it was filmed beautifully but there didn’t seem to be any meat in the story. I just stopped watching it over halfway through.

The movie doesn't seem to have a plot except 3 weirdos and a creepy cousin along with townies. There's nothing supernatural or scary at all.

The book is terrific. The movie did look good and the leads were talented enough but it's a failure.

Echoing others in this thread, I loved the book but disliked the movie even though it was aesthetically pleasing and had a good cast.

Perhaps it’s just not a cinematic story? It’s not a traditional horror tale that builds to scares, but unnerving from the beginning because of the creepy narrator. The reader learns right away that she is unhinged, but also that she’s an outcast after experiencing a significant tragedy. You feel as if you should sympathize with her because of what she’s been through, but you can’t warm up to her because she seems more animal than human. It seems incredibly tricky to capture this on film.

What has she been through? She killed family members but why? It's kind of implied at one point in the movie that the older sister was being molested by Daddy? What else?

I don't believe I have ever seen a decent adaptation of a book by Shirley Jackson. I do vaguely remember a TV movie, or anthology episode of The Lottery that was okay, but every adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House has been terrible. The Netflix series was okay on its own, but as an adaptation it was awful. The only things they used was the title, and some character names.

It’s established within the first paragraphs that Merricat is mocked by children in the town because her sister Connie went to prison for poisoning most of the family. Only much later (in a “blink and you’ll miss it” exchange) do Merricat and Connie acknowledge that Merricat actually did the poisoning. So, while it’s clear right away that Merricat is mentally abnormal and harbors murderous, rageful thoughts, the reader is meant to think that this stems from the trauma and isolation Merricat experienced as a result of Connie’s horrible crime.

It’s been a while since I read the book, but I don’t recall any definite reason that Merricat murders her family. There are suggestions that sexual abuse could be at play: Merricat bears particular hatred towards her father, and resents long-lost relative Charles for (among other things) wearing her father’s old clothes and sleeping in his bed. It’s also possible that the sexual abuse in the family was directed towards Connie - while Connie doesn’t radiate mental disturbance in the same way that Merricat does, she took the rap for Merricat’s crime (even washing the sugar bowl containing the poison while the family lay dying). So, questions could be asked about what motivated Connie to do that.

My take when I first read the book is that the Blackwood family, despite being prominent citizens in their small New England town, were mostly crazy as shithouse rats and eventually produced a homicidal maniac who didn’t necessarily need a compelling reason to murder all of them.

Damn, this thread prompted me to start reading the book again. Poor Uncle Julian is always reminiscing about what happened the day of the deaths. In Chapter 2 he mentions that he heard the parents quarreling hatefully the night before it happened. Says he heard the mother say "I won't have it--I won't stand for it," and father say "We have no choice." Uncle Julian doesn't know what it's about and assumes it's about money. Now I think they were talking about putting crazy Merricat away and she knew it. That might have been the tipping point for her.

As I recall, the parents were discussing having Merricat institutionalized. She murdered them before she could be sent away.

[quote] I do vaguely remember a TV movie, or anthology episode of The Lottery that was okay, but every adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House has been terrible

"The Haunting", starring Julie Harris, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn and Claire Bloom, is considered one of the best horror films of all time. A remake of it was made in the 90s that really sucked.

The horror in Shirley Jackson's stories and novels is subtle and creepy, not in your face. If you're fond of a lot of blood and gore and vampires and zombies and monsters and maniac knife-wielding killers, if that's what you consider "horror" then I guess you would find Shirley Jacksons' works "boring."

Loved the book. All that obsessive introspection and imagining that arranging objects can create or placate Power. Right up my alley. I can’t imagine how that could be translated to film.

Much appreciated The Haunting with Julie Harris; Elizabeth Moss does a tremendous playing Jackson in the film Shirley.