Curly Hair, What's in There? is a segment that will explore the random topics that are always circling my mind, things I want to talk about or things I want to share.
The Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House
I know, I'm a little bit behind the curve on this one. It's taken me a long time to get around to watching this Netflix original series, but boy was I glad when I did. I like horror and I like drama and this series has it all. It explores some really serious themes while at the same time being exciting and scary.
The series is about the Crain family, their experience in the haunted Hill House, named after its first owners, and how it affects them for their whole lives. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about this show, so be prepared. To keep it as simple as possible, I'm going to talk about my five favourite things about this show.
This contains SPOILERS for The Haunting of Hill House
The series is about the Crain family, their experience in the haunted Hill House, named after its first owners, and how it affects them for their whole lives. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about this show, so be prepared. To keep it as simple as possible, I'm going to talk about my five favourite things about this show.
This contains SPOILERS for The Haunting of Hill House
1. Olivia Crain
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| Carla Gugino as Olivia |
Olivia is the mother of the Crain family, married to Hugh, and mother of five children: Steve, Shirley, Theodora, and twins Luke and Nell. She seems like a great mother, she only wants the best for her children and she will do anything for them. Anything. The house, as we know, is haunted, and it can have a terrible effect on anyone living there. As explained by Mrs Dudley, the housekeeper, the last person to own the house, Poppy Hill, was crazy. Like, properly crazy. When she starts haunting Olivia is when things go downhill for her. Olivia seems the most affected by the house; she sees a lot of ghosts and is taken in by the house very quickly. She sees things that nobody else does and when Poppy starts haunting her, she sees more.
Poppy convinces her that her children are in danger and that she needs to wake them up from the awful dream they are having, and the way to do this is death. She sees her twins, all grown up, and dead. We know about Nell's death as this happens early on in the series, and it explains a lot of what Shirley sees when she is tending to her sister's corpse. It worries us about Luke, though, who we know is a junkie but is still alive. Her seeing this convinces her that her children need to be rescued. She is completely overtaken by the power of the house, and when she dies in the house, it is because the house told her to. She comes back to haunt and talk to Hugh, and when the children, Nell and Luke, go back to the house, she welcomes them in, ready for them to wake up from their terrible dreams. She has good intentions, but she is too blinded by the haunting that she fails to keep them safe. I think she is a really interesting, really significant character, and in the episode that follows her, so much is explained and we begin to see why she is as crazy as she is.
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| Poppy and Olivia |
2. The timeline
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| From the episode Two Storms |
One of the reasons why I love this show is how confusing it is. Sounds stupid, I know, but the more you watch the more you'll understand this. It starts with Steve, researching a ghost story. We then see them, as children, in the house, with Nell being haunted. Then we see them moving in, and this is intertwined with Nell being ignored by her siblings as an adult, as we find out what they are all doing. Then we see them running away and escaping from the house. This is all the first episode. The rest of them fill in the gaps. Nell dies, and things go back and forwards a lot. We seem to see things from different peoples' perspectives. For example, we have an episode focusing on Steve, how he wants to help his parents, and he sees his mother talking to herself in the twins' room. Later, we see these events from Olivia's perspective, and she is talking to Poppy and seeing the twins talking to her. She is brought out of this by Steve and we are back to something we understand. Equally, we get more views of the escape, of things happening in the house. In episode six, Two Storms, we see a storm and the drama happening at the funeral home, things happening with Nell, and simultaneously we are seeing an intense storm at Hill House, and all of the scary things that come with it. This is the episode where I knew I loved the show, and I'll cover that later. Things in the present happen linearly, whereas in the past, they are all out of order, and we only know this as the show goes on. It is very cleverly made and so riveting.
3. Nell Crain
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| Violet Mcgraw as young Nell |
Everything about this character gets me. Played incredibly by Victoria Pedretti, Nell is the youngest and Luke's twin. She seems to be affected throughout her life; she is the first one we see getting haunted, by her 'Bent Neck Lady', and then she kills herself in the second episode, as an adult. Her whole character is very interesting as she only seems to be haunted by this one ghost. In her episode, when we see her return to the house, we learn so much about this. Her mother welcomes her back, and gives her the locket she has always wanted. Olivia wants her to wake up, so we see her putting the necklace on, but then suddenly it is a noose. She jumps from the stairs, and we see her neck break. She falls and realises now that she was the Bent Neck Lady all along; just like her mother she saw herself dead and this is what haunted her for her whole life.
She was truly afraid of her own death. We see her falling down and every time she haunts herself, up until the first time we saw when the Bent Neck Lady screamed in her face. This time, we know that she is screaming because she is the cause of all of her own fear. It is so clever and so well done, and the character of Nell is so complex and interesting. I love it.
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| The Bent Neck Lady |
2. The whole metaphor
The house is a metaphor and I love it. Hugh believes that it was the house that killed Nell and her mother, and in a way it was. In the final episode Nell describes the house like a body, and it seems that the house can be interpreted as a metaphor for mental illness. In episode six, Nell gets lost in the house; everyone is searching for her for a long time. At the same time, buttons (which are a significant object to Nell) appear over her dead eyes, and the family are trying to figure out why they are there. It switches between this and the past, and when they find Nell, she is saying that she was there all along; she was screaming but nobody heard her. It then cuts to her dead body. This is a stark reminder that she did have serious mental health issues, which we see in her episode, with the death of her husband and her haunting. It's clear for Luke as well, their twin link means that when he is clean, Nell feels fine, but when he is afraid, getting haunted, he uses and Nell feels bad again. The whole idea of it is so interesting and you have to watch it to fully understand it, but it is incredible.
1. The Red Room
The Red Room is such an important concept. If you are as well versed in historical horror as I am, you'll know that a Red Room is never good. It always contains some sort of haunting and it is always going to be important, and never has it been more true than in this. The Red Room is a mystery throughout the show. The door doesn't open, and none of the keys work for it. We know it isn't empty, because Nell saw something moving behind the door. In the final episode, when Steve and his father, followed by Shirley and Theo, return to the house to find Luke, the Red Room is explained. It opens its door only when it wants to. The siblings all end up in the room, as derelict as the rest of the house and as creepy as we would have imagined. Nell shows herself to them and explains that the Red Room is the heart of the house, it is special to everyone. Everyone has been in the room in their lives, but they never knew they were in there. There were certain times when we never saw the door of the room, and this is why. The Red Room was a specific, different place for everyone, and it made them trust the house; feel comfortable in it. I won't say how everyone saw it, but when Nell explains it, it makes a lot of sense. Also, I noticed that you can tell they are all in the same room, as when we see them in their particular versions of the room, the framing is the same, and the same exact rectangular window is in the centre of it.
We also very rarely see more than one person in each version of the room. Hugh doesn't have his own version; he is too busy trying to renovate the house and he doesn't want to give into its magic. This is echoed when, in the last episode, he is not allowed into the room. The ending is also spectacular, reflecting all of what I have mentioned and it makes so much sense.
I cannot wait for a second season. Whether it follows the Crains, a previous owner of Hill House, or a different haunted house entirely, it will be amazing.
Also, this series is based on a book, which I recently bought, so look forward to a Page to Screen on my new favourite thing!
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