An absolute baby wuss of a human, Emma Clifton makes an impassioned plea for you to give Netflix’s new series, The Haunting of Bly Manor, a chance.
[TW: These shows contain suicidal themes]
When I tell you I’m a wuss, I want you to know that I’m not exaggerating. I slept with a night light until I was a teenager. I was so terrified after seeing The Blair Witch Project in cinemas that I wouldn’t even let myself THINK the name “Blair Witch,” lest she read my mind and come and kill me in my sleep.
So when I tell you that I think The Haunting of Hill House and now, The Haunting of Bly Manor, are two of the best shows out there, I say this with context that I am such a jumpy person, my flatmates are competitive about who can scare me the most just by walking into the kitchen while I am cooking.
Trust me, I understand being a scaredy cat. And this show is worth it.
Because what these Haunting shows do is take the monsters-under-the-bed fear of being a child and twist it into an adult world, where you realise that actually the scariest thing that can happen to you isn’t a visit from a ghost, it is losing someone you love.
(Boy, that’s just a laugh-a-minute premise, isn’t it?)
Here is the luring power of this show: When The Haunting of Hill House first came out, my best friend Lucy (a fellow scaredy cat) and I decided we would watch the first episode on Halloween as a scary treat. It was terrifying but it was GRIPPING and so we decided to watch the next episode. My flatmate Pip came in halfway through episode two, lingered on the edge of the couch for 40 minutes before committing to a seat and watching the next two episodes with us. Then we re-watched all five episodes with my other flatmate, so he was on board. We grew as a horror community, one person at a time, until there was a group of us, watching on a summer weekend with the curtains closed, because we were glued to this series. None of us are ‘horror’ people, but that didn’t matter.
This was an addictive show, flicking back between past and present, about a family coming to terms with a summer spent in a creepy house, where a spiral of supernatural events eventually led to the death of their mother. You see them as scared children and then you see them as grieving adults, all struggling to process the loss decades later. I have not yet found a show that deals as deftly with grief and loss as this series and I became so invested in the journey of the characters that I would forget EVERY TIME that it was actually a horror and then always be shocked and surprised when another ghost appearance occurred.
Both seasons – The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor are based on famous horror books. The novel The Haunting of Hill House, written by Shirley Jackson, is considered cannon by horror experts and the series is a beautiful, chilling homage to the work. Stephen King – a man who knows his way around a horror adaptation – called the series “close to a work of genius.” Bly Manor is loosely based on the Henry James classic The Turn of the Screw and is, like its predecessor, about a super haunted house. While Hill House was about the true horror of grief and death, Bly Manor is more of a twisted love story.
So let’s get down to business: are these shows scary?
Look, I cannot deny that I did scream out loud in various jump scares and also spent a large part of the time hiding my face with a blanket. The beauty of both seasons is that things are done in a very horror-noir way, so once you get used to the rhythm of the show and the lingering camera work that is applied pre-ghost, you know when to hide your face and then calmly ask your flatmates to tell you what’s going on because they’re braver than you.
Should you watch this show alone?
Absolutely not.
Should you watch this show at night time with the lights off?
It does add the ambiance for sure but I also highly recommend having a tea break between each episode and talking loudly to yourself as you have a bathroom break so that you don’t get scared by the shower curtain (yes, this happened to me).
Will this show make me braver?
100% yes. There are no cheap thrills here – almost everything that is scary is usually explained later on, so that you realise that you should feel sympathy for the ghosts, rather than terror. Normally they are just people who have had a rough time and actually, they just deserve a cup of tea and a chat (it’s just hard to give it to them when they are dressed in v scary Victorian nightdresses or have no face).
Will this show make me cry?
Oh without a doubt. The subject matter is very, very heavy – upon re-watching The Haunting of Hill House for a second time, knowing when to shut my eyes in every episode so I didn’t get scared*, I was struck by how incredibly sad and emotional this show is. Come for the ghosts, stay for the catharsis.
*Can I watch this show with you so you can tell me when to shut my eyes?
Ask my boyfriend whether or not he enjoyed me hissing “THERE IS A SCARY PART COMING UP” every 10 minutes and then reassess whether or not you would like that experience.
The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor are both available now on Netflix
