Scare-a-Thon 2021 Day 12: The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

  I was sleeping on this one.  I really thought it couldn't live up to the hype so I just dumped it into my queue.  Now I'm invested.

The Crain family bought Hill House as a fixer-upper, a project to flip in a summer to make a tidy profit and build their forever house.  The house had other ideas.  Twenty years later, the survivors have found various ways to cope, or not.  Steven (Michiel Huisman) wrote a "fictionalized" account and made an assload of money writing a series of ghost stories he doesn't believe in, Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser) runs a funeral home, Theo (Kate Siegel) is a child psychologist, Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is a heroin addict, and Nellie (Victoria Pedretti) is desperately trying to keep her family from fracturing even further.  Another tragedy brings them back to face the house and their own demons once more.

Each episode focuses on one member of the Crain family, exploring the same events through different perspectives, unraveling the trauma over a slow burn of ten episodes total.  It is a masterclass in how to do horror.  Every positive thing critics said about it is absolutely true.  The cast is spectacular, the writing is top-notch, and the cinematography is *chef's kiss*.

I have one quibble.  And it's not even specific to this show but a trend I've noticed over a couple of horror movies.  It is kind of spoiler-y so I'm going to put it in white just because if you are not bothered by this, I don't want it to ruin the whole show for you.

**SPOILER-ISH TALK FOLLOWS**  Okay, so there is a thing recently where ghosts aren't remnants of the past but premonitions of a future.  I don't like that and here's why:  it's too literary.  It feels like the ultimate foreshadowing, like an English teacher's assignment, too neat, too pat.  In that sense, it's almost smug.  Also, it raises discussion of predetermination and fate versus free will, which again feels pretentious and smug.  It's that kind of philosophical circle jerk every asshole brings up at least once in college.  Most damning, it echoes Greek tragedy.  The defining feature of Greek tragedy is that the protagonist knows exactly what their downfall is and does nothing to change it, or can't do anything to change it.  It's already decided.  Which is both nihilistic and smug.  So much smugness.  **END SPOILER-Y RANT**

That one tiny issue aside, this was an excellent show from start to finish and well worth watching.  It's streaming on Netflix.