Watching the “feel-good” ending (complete with touching acoustic guitar music), I half-expected it to be said: “There is a Hill House within each of us. In the end the house is but a metaphor for the difficulties in life.” :rolleyes: Up until the ending tho, I was thouroughly engrossed. I loved it. Until the end.
Haven’t seen Hereditary yet, but now I just have to.
It took me until about episode 4 to get everyone straight. But I still sometimes confused grown-up Theo and Shirley right up until the end.
I just watched episode 4 and 5.
Yeah, that improved hugely. I think I also just got everyone straight.
OK, I had not actually finished episode 5 when I posted that. We obviously have now and:
[spoiler]We did NOT see it coming that she is/was the Bent-neck Lady. That was super horrific and shocking and it totally caught Mrs. Mahaloth and me off-guard. Huge win for the show and we totally were impressed.
I will remember that moment long after we watch the show. That was legit scary and cool. [/spoiler]
Apparently Mr. Showrunner Man (his name escapes me) has said that if there’s a Season 2, it won’t revolve around the Crains (“they’ve been through enough”).
First of all, there’s no IF. This is the second coming of Stranger Things for Netflix, they’d be fools not to bring it back. Secondly, I’ve seen at least two interviews with actors who are operating on the assumption that they’ll be brought back. Third, the house’s backstory alone could fill another season, and surely a skilled writer with a deft hand can tie it back to the Crains. Or just excise them altogether. But regardless, yeah, there will be a Season 2.
The adults could return as often as needed, provided that the timeframe supported their ages. The kids are probably already too old, given how brief their stay in the house was.
I hope they’ll (mostly) let Hill House be and use We Have Always Lived in the Castle for season 2.
Yes, the ending undermined everything. It was as if it was written by someone who had not seen the previous episodes, not seen the great movie and never even heard of the book.
Agree 100%. Word-for-word. I felt tricked after the ending. Like the makers of the series were having a riotous good laugh sticking it to me. “This is what we think of you viewers !! Fuck you! Eat shit!! And smile!” 
I’ve really been enjoying this and though I haven’t watched the last two eps, I probably would have predicted a happy ending even if I hadn’t spoiled it for myself and read this thread :o Speaking of which, even though I read the spoiler about the bent neck lady it didn’t turn out to mean what I thought I thought it was going to be Nell as an old, gnarled woman, stuck in the house her whole life or something so, still very effective for me.
I’m so glad I checked into this thread; when I saw the title on Netflix I passed it up because - blasphemy- I am really not a fan of the original movie (though I do love the book). This series isn’t perfect by any means but when it’s creepy it is CREE PEE.
If / when I rewatch it I will skip over the part with the kittens:( though I thought the visual of what at first looked liked a desiccated cat corpse was well done
As for the acting, I think everyone is doing a fine job. At first I thought Carla Gugino’s gorgeous, Earth Mother character was going to get on my nerves but I really grew attached to her. Timothy Hutton (one of my first Sweet Babies) is very convincing as a shell of a man trying to keep the remainder of his haunted family intact.
As an aside, my brain was in facial recognition(not the correct term) overdrive whereby when I looked at Theo I saw Angelina Jolie. Adult Steve reminds me of Dan Futterman; Luke made me think of Jake Gyllenhaal and young Luke made me think of the little kid from Jerry Maguire. Then I drove myself crazy because I couldn’t find a match for the actress who plays Shirley. A young Rachel Griffiths perhaps?
Looking forward to watching the last eps, and depending how it’s done, maybe the happy ending won’t piss me off.
Just finished it and I completely agree. 85% family drama, 15% horror. Could have been pared down to six or eight episodes.
Funny that Russ Tamblyn played Nell’s quack psychiatrist. He played Laura Palmer’s psychiatrist in Twin Peaks.
Loved Timothy Hutton’s performance and I agree that Kate Siegel could be Angelina Jolie’s younger twin. Also, I think Victoria Pedretti (Nell) is going to be a big deal.
Have seen the whole thing.
Loved it, a great Netflix show. Would not expect or want a season 2, but watch another miniseries from the same creators. The ending was a cheese-fest, but I was accepting of it. I agree the guitar song was a bit much; they could have ended without literally showing the happy ending in full effect.
Still, a great show with some great performances.
I’ve watched the whole thing
Liked:
- Decent horror. mostly based around creepiness rather than simple jump scares. (Though, obviously, there are a couple.)
- Pretty good writing.
- Pretty good acting.
Found wanting but didn’t take away from the experience enough to annoy me:
- The house looked like something designed as a TV haunted house. Something more realistic would have contributed more to the ambience, because it wouldn’t be so glaringly fake.
- A lot of the interior shots looked like they were shot on greenscreen and the house behind them was just 3D rendered. There was even a shot with Nell laying in her casket where it seemed pretty clear that she was just a CGI character. Again, the glaring fakeness sort of took away from the experience and made it less horror-tastic than it otherwise would have been.
- They went a little too far explaining their mysteries. Once you explain everything, it’s not quite as creepy, since it becomes “physics” for that universe. To a large extent, I’d say that you’re really best to just quit watching after episode 7.
Does annoy me a bit:
- The haunting through time aspect didn’t surprise me, and I pretty well expected it to be the case. While it’s not original to this series, it’s still relatively unique and I think they could have done more with it. Instead, they used it as a gimmick for one character and abandoned it for the whole rest of the story, instead switching to the Red Room = Stomach metaphor for a few of the other characters, throwing in a healthy dose of “most ghosts are good except the one crazy flapper lady”, and then switched to “haunting is good and a great way to keep the family around!” at the end. So, having decided to expose the physics of their universe, they then couldn’t keep it straight and rendered everything a bit pointless. I suspect that they farmed out the characters to different writers, had them each write a horror story for that character from beginning to end, and then glued those stories back together even if it didn’t quite make sense. They got lazy during the writing phase.
I quite enjoyed it, enough to stay up all night binging.I didnt mind the ending except for the constant fire teases.I liked the resolution to most of the mysteries, especially Bent Neck Lady and the tea set of stars.
The constantly time shifts did get a little hard to follow, especially the repeated tease of opening a scary door only to come out the other side in a different scene. I think it would have helped if the time shifts at least followed the same character, as in say young Steve ends the scene, and old Steve starts the next. And also if the first few episodes had them saying their names more often. Or had some other recognizable trait like the boy with glasses keeping them into adulthood.
A few things I didn’t quite get:
When Nell’s husband dies, it looks like the ghost kills him, but then the ghost turns out to be her, so that doesn’t make sense.
I couldn’t quite figure out which ghosts were real, and which were just house tricks, and which were time traveling visions.
At first it seems like the house itself is evil, and it seems implied that the stillborn baby ghost kind of possessed it to cause that. But then most of the horrible things seem to be engineered by evil flapper lady.
What was up with slender man mcclock meddler? Something about him being a representation of fear? What that just a poetic metaphor or…?
What was the red door? One theory is the stomach of the house, which reminded me of the island in Life of Pi. But it didnt really seem to be feeding off them, it seemed more like the Room of Requirement in Harry Potter. At the end it seemed more like a physical door to the afterlife. Also, I want to paint it black.
Also, what was the deal with the different blueprints?
Also, I didn’t quite get how the wife was suddenly back at the house after just being on the phone at the Aunt’s.
I think that the bent-neck lady visited some of the most painful scenes from Nell’s life, like her husband dying while she’s stuck in sleep paralysis and moving to that damn house.
I think they’re all real and all time-traveling. Except for the ghosts who were the flapper lady in disguise.
That’s the effect they were going for, that the evil we thought was from the house actually came from one bad apple.
The tall ghost just wanted his hat back. As to the clock guy… dunno. Guess he died in the house?
I got a room of requirement vibe from the red room, too. Its origin, though… I don’t think the flapper lady or any of the ghosts were controlling it. So there IS something about the house, itself, since both the living and the dead can occupy the room.
Mama added the footprint for her forever house in miniature to the blueprints. Thousands of times.
I think that the mom was at a local motel and lied about being at the aunts. I really need to watch it all again, though.
I finished it last night and I really enjoyed it. It was great to have a horror story without gore, relying on chills, creepiness and suspense. I even liked the end.
The adult casting was good but the age spread of the 5 kids kept throwing me off. Shirley was too old and Nell too young.
She never got on the plane and was at a hotel making the call, pretending she was at her sister’s house