By: Elena Donatone
Have you always loved horror and supernatural stories? The ones that leave you on the edge of your seat and creeped out when you watch them alone in the dark? If the answer is yes, then The Haunting Of Hill House is all you could have wished for and more!
This supernatural horror drama is partly based on the novel of the same name by the American author Shirley Jackson.
The story follows the lives of five siblings and their scarring experience with the scary and haunted Hill House.
We meet the characters as problematic and dysfunctional adults. Steve (Michiel Huisman) is a successful writer and the husband in a marriage that is falling apart. All his fame came from exploiting his family’s horrific past, which he turned into a best-selling book.
Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser) owns a mortuary with her husband and she is the one everybody turns to for advice and guidance. Even if her somewhat normal family life is just a façade.
Theodora, “Theo” (Kate Siege), is the rebel of the family, who's not really adjusted to society and its rules. And finally Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Nell (Victoria Pedretti)—the twins and youngest of the siblings. Both deeply scarred for life by the mysterious events that unfolded at Hill House.
“Use your cup of stars. Insist on your cup of stars. Once they’ve strapped you into being like everyone else, you’ll never see your cup of stars again”
And it is right at Hill House that everything started and leads back to. Hill House is the mansion the siblings briefly lived in as kids, with their parents Hugh (Henry Thomas) and Olivia (Carla Gugino).
The house, right from the start, is quite different from any other. The halls are mysterious and there is even a room behind a locked red door that nobody can find the key to! As the weeks go by, the house starts to affect the family in ways nobody could ever predict… As Olivia says, describing what the haunted house does to her: “All those colors. They’re all gone now, Hugh. And there’s only one left. I’m scared. That’s all I am. There’s nothing left. I’m only scared”. The family starts to realise the house’s strange past, and what it can do to people, but could it be too late to save their sanity and their future?
The series greatly mixes the present with flashbacks from the siblings’ past in the scary house. This helps the viewer understand how every aspect of the siblings’ adult life is deeply connected to their past and what happened at Hill House.
“It’s kids like us who’ve been through more than other kids. We’re tougher than other kids. We’re really good builders. We make ourselves really safe. And no one ever gets in.”
This amazing horror series is one of the best Netflix has produced in a while. The great cast makes the story even more interesting and binge-worthy. Victoria Pedretti (Nell), also known as Love from the highly successful series You, delivers an amazing performance and contributes to her character becoming a person you can relate to on a deeper level.
The pain and the loss Nell experiences in the series is reflected in Victoria Pedretti’s eyes. You will 100% love her acting in the series, just as much as you will admire Carla Gugino’s performance as Olivia, the matriarch of the family. Her acting is outstanding and it makes you care about her story. It helps the viewer understand how much a mother is willing to risk in order to keep her children safe and that is all thanks to Carla Gugino’s great delivery.
And the story will do the rest.. The Haunting of Hill House is a perfectly designed puzzle. All the pieces will come into place at the right time and all the mystery will eventually be solved, leaving no stone unturned.
So, what are you waiting for? Immerse yourself in a world of horror and ghosts that will leave you up at night and dying for the next episode!
“Mom says that a house is like a body. And every house has eyes and bones and skin. A face. This room is like the heart of the house. No, not a heart, a stomach.”
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