To start off I will say that I won’t be giving away any spoilers!
I thoroughly enjoyed binge-watching Netflix’s original The Haunting of Hill House (THOHH for short)! The plot was intricate and though it fell in the genre of horror, it was not all that jump-scary, it was more psychologically terrifying.
I am not an avid horror movie watching kind of girl. I can barely get through a scary story my friends tell me without being terrified. I’m not sure what drew me to the THOHH – I’m never the person who asks to watch a horror show and actually sits through it. But THOHH was different.
Netflix originals can be iffy, so I didn’t have too many high hopes. I do however LOVE Stranger Things, so I figured I would give THOHH a shot. My roommate and I started it right around Halloween time to get into the spooky season. I was honestly very surprised how fast I got hooked on the show.
IMDB’s synopsis of the show is “flashing between past and present, a fractured family confronts haunting memories of their old home and the terrifying events that drove them from it.” The scenes go back and forth in time, from the present to the past of five siblings. The past is set during the short time the family lived at Hill House, and as the viewer you learn about their past paranormal experiences through the present-day adults the kids have grown to be.
Each of the siblings actually plays one of the 5 stages of grief, figured out by Tumblr user cagedbirdsong according to thewrap.com. This just allows the viewer to delve deeper into the minds of each sibling while watching.
The acting was better than most Netflix originals, but the actual horror scenes seemed to be very cliché – they were scary to me, but to a person who loves horror I wouldn’t assume it to be extremely frightening at all. My favorite aspect of the show was how amazing the child actors were. I absolutely love kids, and the child actors were extremely adorable and portrayed the story very well.
I definitely think The Haunting of Hill House is worth the watch! It is only 10 one-hour episodes and even though it isn’t quite spooky season anymore, this show can still make the air feel eerie and cold. I highly recommend giving it a shot whether you enjoy horror or not because the plot is so much more than just paranormal – it focuses a lot on the human psyche.
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