Table Of Content
- Series & Book Cover.
- Spoilers.
- O.J. Simpson’s Lawyer Reverses Opinion on Payments to Goldman Family (Exclusive)
- Meryl Streep Says She Was "Traumatized" Watching Nicole Kidman in 'Big Little Lies' at AFI Life Achievement Gala
- Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher lacks the passionate weirdness of Poe
- Real-Life 'Baby Reindeer' Stalker Speaks Out Following Netflix Show Success
We do get some fabulous creative moments, like Flanagan’s gleeful edit of an opening montage that introduces us to all members of the Usher family through witty cross-cuts and overlapping dialogue. If what you came for were eight cycles of impending doom counting down to their garish conclusions, you’re in luck. Trucco’s character is Rufus Griswold, a name shared with the 19th century scribe whose reflections on Poe after the latter’s death helped shape our possibly incorrect perception of the author as an opioid-addicted madman, which adds a layer of irony to Flanagan’s Sackler-esque prism.
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The Fall of the House of Usher Review.
Posted: Fri, 22 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Series & Book Cover.
As writers, both Poe and Flanagan are moody, more than a bit shameless, and obsessed with psychological and philosophical questions about death, grief, and loss. Poe’s infamous short story that provides a basis for this work possesses an additional affinity with Flanagan because it shares his obsession with family. The first two episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher premiered at Fantastic Fest in September 2023 before the Netflix release the following month, being viewed more than 13 million times in its first two weeks. It was met with positive reviews, with critics praising its production values, directing, and performances (in particular from Gugino, Greenwood and Mark Hamill), although they were divided on its narrative, notably in relation to the source materials. The Fall of the House of Usher is an American gothic horror drama television miniseries created by Mike Flanagan.
Spoilers.
” “No, not before,” he replies in one of the show’s many glimpses of Flanagan’s viciously dark sense of humor. (Poe had one too.) Roderick has been haunted by all his awful children who have shuffled off this mortal coil, and it’s because it feels like the ghosts are finally coming for him that he is ready to confess. He’s having visions of monstrous ghosts, including the recurring specter of Verna (Carla Gugino), a figure that connects most of these tall tales as a sort of vengeful force of karma, the devil come to take what she’s due from a man who profited off the pain of others. But the narrative mostly lacks the poetic sensibility and depth of feeling, the weight of profundity that makes Poe such a perennial favorite.
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The second belongs to Henry Thomas as Freddie, the maligned eldest child who channels his familial resentment and insecurity into malevolent domestic abuse as his siblings start dying, culminating in a classic, shall we say, stroke of irony. Twin siblings Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) and Madeline (Mary McDonnell) Usher are sitting atop the Fortunato pharmaceutical company. For decades, they’ve made billions off an opioid called Ligodone, a painkiller marketed as non-addictive, even though its actual addictive properties have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Entitled “Meet the Ushers,” this scene around the family’s massive banquet table introduces the entire cast. The family’s lawyer, Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill), whom they call “The Pym Reaper,” hands out contracts for everyone to sign. If any of the signees later reveal themselves to be snitches, they’ll get more than stitches.
Meryl Streep Says She Was "Traumatized" Watching Nicole Kidman in 'Big Little Lies' at AFI Life Achievement Gala
On the page, in stories including “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the character is the wily progenitor of every fictional detective to follow, but on the screen he’s a passive receiver of information. The character never evinces the necessary internal conflict of a man who yearned for legal recourse against the Ushers — not the Rube Goldberg meat-grinding machine version of justice being meted out in a fashion closer to the Final Destination movies than Poe’s more elegant prose. Well, that’s surely a reference to Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” if there ever was one. And, we feel there will be many more Poe Easter eggs for us to uncover.
Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher lacks the passionate weirdness of Poe
Imagine watching Succession and seeing each of the series’ miserable players get what they deserve in the most lethal way possible? That’s the type of delicious schadenfreude that The Fall of the House of Usher offers. We watch on as each victim – Usher or otherwise – makes their proverbial bed despite the grace of the literal warnings offered. After all, hubris, like any of the fine products from the Roderick-run Fortunato, is a hell of a drug.
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What Critics And Fans Are Saying About The Fall Of The House Of Usher.
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On the other hand, there are plenty of strange things about the Usher family. For one, “the entire family lay in the direct line of descent,” meaning that only one son from each generation survived and reproduced. Poe implies incestuous relations sustained the genetic line and that Roderick and Madeline are the products of extensive intermarriage within the Usher family. The Fall of the House of Usher, supernatural horror story by Edgar Allan Poe, published in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in 1839 and issued in Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Maddy and Roddy are supposed to be these genius business people, but they can't see his drop about a mole (no I'm sorry, an informant)? Even if they were driven to work against each other, they were driven against the world first.
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It is revealed that Roderick's sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. Roderick and Madeline are the only remaining members of the Usher family. In bringing Poe’s fables to the contemporary world, Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher centers on some of today’s greatest evils. Fortunato – the Usher’s pharmaceutical company and a name plucked from Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” – is the core driver behind all of Roderick and Madeline Usher’s actions. Meanwhile, the latter’s obsession with immortality is constantly playing on the fringes, only brought to the forefront to appropriately mock AI and any place it has in storytelling or the human experience as a whole. Whatever level you’re at, it’s a formula for a series of moment-to-moment effectiveness, with some cleverness and much playful horror.
The narrator is impressed with Roderick's paintings and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings "The Haunted Palace", then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it. Further, Roderick believes that his fate is connected to the family mansion. What Flanagan and his team of writers did wasn’t just develop individual odes to “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and more – they married them together to create what is one of the most impeccable shows in recent memory. What makes this House of Usher decidedly not an anthology is the way that the writers intricately weave the main players’ stories throughout each episode.
The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline, bloodied from her arduous escape from the tomb. In a final fit of rage, she attacks her brother, scaring him to death as she herself expires. The narrator then runs from the house, and, as he does, he notices a flash of moonlight behind him. He turns back in time to see the Moon shining through the suddenly widened crack in the house. As he watches, the House of Usher splits in two and the fragments sink away into the lake.
Flanagan takes a kind of mix-and-match approach to his biggest references that frequently makes their origin stories nearly incidental. For example, the Poe short story “The Black Cat” is originally about a murderous addict who succumbs fully to his violent impulses. But in the House of Usher episode “Black Cat,” that aspect of the focal character is almost entirely absent because we barely spend any time with him before he’s battling his furry demon. Instead, that psychology gets handed to the subject of the “Pit and the Pendulum” episode. As a result, that episode has little in common with its origin source, while “Black Cat” lacks any of the depth and murderous intensity that makes Poe’s story so memorable.
But the themes remain the same—guilt, obsession, vengeance, and a supernatural sense of justice. Roderick Usher’s children are getting what they deserve, not merely because they are the fruit of a very poisoned tree but because they have made horrific decisions to stay in the shelter of wealth and privilege. Usher has been reimagined as the head of a massive pharmaceutical company he runs with his twin sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell). Every episode includes flashbacks to a young Roderick (Zach Gilford), Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald), and Annabel Lee (Katie Parker), Roderick’s first wife.
In “The Raven,” Poe remarks, “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December.” But we guess October is close enough. And it is the best month for this kind of spooky limited-series to premiere. The Fall of the House of Usher will release on Netflix on October 12. But who are all The Fall of the House of Usher characters that we get to meet in the above trailer?
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