Review: Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House

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*Some spoilers ahead*

The Haunting of Hill House is Netflix’s latest offering of horror. The ten-part series is loosely based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson.

The series focuses on the Crain family and flits between their time as a young family living in the eponymous Hill House and the present day, as well as various points in between, focussing on how living in the house has affected each of them. Each of the first seven episodes focuses on a different family member, with the final three rounding off the family’s story. We see how the house haunts each of them, not just while they live there, but years later as the children become adults and struggle to move on with their lives.

We meet Hugh and Olivia Crain as they move their five children (Steve, Shirley, Theo and twins Luke and Nell) into the Massachusetts mansion with the plan to renovate and sell it before summer is out. As we move through the series we also meet different ghosts residing in the house, as well as caretakers Mr and Mrs Dudley who refuse to stay in the house after dark.

In the first episode we learn that, as an adult, Steve is a horror writer who has cashed in on Hill House (despite claiming to have never seen a ghost himself and not believing his younger siblings who say they have), Shirley owns a mortuary and funeral home, Theo is a child psychologist who constantly seems to wear gloves and lives in Shirley’s guest house, Luke is a drug addict and his twin, Nell, sees a ghostly figure she calls the ‘Bent-Neck Lady’ who has followed her since childhood.

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Despite being a story about a haunted house and featuring plenty of creepy moments and jump scares (which are all well placed and never gratuitous) this story is more about the Crains a family rather than the ghosts of Hill House. Each of the directions these characters’ lives as adults have gone in make perfect sense as we delve further into their childhoods. We meet plenty of ghosts along the way, but they all add real purpose to the story line; the backstory of the Bent-Neck Lady, for example (which we find out about in episode five, 'The Bent-Neck Lady'), is not only a shocking twist, but also heart-wrenching.

The series is beautifully directed, and the cinematography is brilliant, and this is supported by the wonderful acting of both the adult cast members and the children. The best example of this comes in episode six ('Two Storms') where the story lines of past and present mirror each other perfectly whilst remaining completely different. The present-day scenes are filmed as continuous shots, the most poignant being a 16-minute scene which plays out more like a piece of theatre than a television show. I have to say this is my all-time favourite TV show episode.

Something which is particularly brilliant throughout the series is the plethora of ghost ‘Easter eggs’: ghostly figures which appear in the backgrounds or sidelines of shots. They don’t add anything to the story, they merely provide extra creepiness to the show, some of them aren’t even noticeable unless you’re really looking for them.

When I began this series, I wasn’t expecting what was to come. Despite some truly suspenseful and even terrifying moments, the overriding theme of this series is one of family and love, not horror, yet it does the horror so well. It makes series such as American Horror Story pale in comparison (which is saying a lot as I am a huge AHS fan). If Netflix decide to make a second season of Hill House, I hope that they take it in a completely different direction, as this season works so well as a stand alone piece.

I honestly don’t think that The Haunting of Hill House could have been made any better and I rate it a perfect 10/10!