At first, I was resistant to watching “The Fall of the House of Usher” for no real good reason. I suppose I was just being a curmudgeon, not liking that someone had taken the sacred texts of Edgar Allan Poe and not only modernized them (gasp!) but layered them over a crime family drama (blasphemy!).
However, after a fellow writer recommended the series to me, she reminded me of the other Mike Flanagan series I enjoyed, including “The Haunting of Hill House,” another of the sacred texts. I had to grudgingly and curmudgeonly admit that I had come to trust Mr. Flanagan with several hours of my time, so I should make the leap again.
A background and previous knowledge of Edgar Allan Poe is not required to enjoy the show or understand what’s going on. However, the subtle nods to the totality of Poe’s work were satisfying to pick up on. I laughed out loud when Madeline Usher served Rufus Griswold a glass of Amontillado. The scene of course was not meant to be funny at all, in fact was a tense ramp up to a climax. But that reference was too surprising and delightful to have any other reaction.
Almost the entirety of the story is told in media res, a technique that I mentioned in a previous post that has been suspiciously on the rise in stories I’ve been reading and watching. I’ll have more to say on that in a more developed post. I won’t spoil anything that’s not spoiled in the first ten minutes of the first episode: everyone dies. So the story lies in how and, more importantly, why they died. This leads to an unfortunately formulaic unfolding of the narratives of the individual episodes, an aspect that Roderick even pokes fun at the outset of one of the episodes.
It can be hard to get into a show about shitty people being shitty to each other. It’s certainly harder to empathize with any of the characters (other than Auggie, Juno, Lenore, and Annabel Lee) than the characters of “The Haunting of Hill House.” I think the episode, “Goldbug,” centering on Tamerlane Usher was probably my favorite because I felt the most empathy for her character, out of all the children. There was certainly satisfaction in seeing all of the shitty people get their comeuppance, especially in a time and place when not many of the rich, powerful, and shitty seem to get theirs. But the story didn’t drive me to binge the series.
I’d recommend “The Fall of the House of Usher” as long as you’re not an Edgar Allan Poe purist and like a little crime family drama mixed with your horror. But I wouldn’t say that it needs to be at the top of your list.
The Chimerical Dark 