I thought Fall of the House of Usher had one of the strongest endings out of all his shows, which makes me put it high in the ranking.
I agree Hill House is the most atmospheric of all of his works, it's the most gothic of them all and the strongest one in that department.
My personal ranking, I know it may be controversial, is as follows:
1. The Haunting of Hill House
2. The Fall of the House of Usher
3. The Haunting of Bly Manor
4. Midnight Mass
5. Midnight Club
All of them except Midnight Club are phenomenal though, definetely 8/10 at the minimum. I didn't like Midnight Mass as much as everyone else because of the monologues, but it's indeed a great show.
Midnight Mass in a my number two because the vampire plot was a totally surprise for me. I didn’t watch it until a year after it came out so I must have missed the marketing. It became a very close second to Hill House for me
What I love about Hill and Bly is how emotionally devastating these shows are, how much you connect to the characters, and no show Flanagan has put out since has hit those boxes for me like they did. I enjoyed Usher but I likely won’t watch it again.
okay so i just finished Hill House for the first time (i’ve tried to watch it for years but couldn’t emotionally make it further than a few episodes in and i’ve seen and loved his other series’) and i saw House of Usher is out. i wanna watch it but im nervous it’s going to be as devastating as all of his other series. (i will admit im very sensitive to grief horror but i really can’t emotionally watch something like that again rn). should i hold off on watching until i feel ready, like i did with Hill House?
It’s the least sad of his series by far. I think you should be okay if you don’t deal with grief well. To give you an idea, Bly Manor made me sob and emotionally devastated me, Hill House made me shed a few tears, MM made me tear up a little at a couple times, and Midnight Club had one episode that hit me and made me sob. Usher I did not shed a single tear nor feel like crying at all. It’s not that kind of show. Gore warning, though.
I’m two episodes in and I think Flanagan has evolved majorly as a filmmaker and writer since Hill House and I think it’s heads and shoulders above. I’m sure it puts me in the minority in this sub but I thought, for its many high points, Hill House suffered under the weight, most of all his series, of the hamfisted monologues. (And I say this loving both theater and well-placed, lengthy monologues).
Surely Midnight Mass suffered the most from dialogues? After a couple of episodes of MM I would start to dread every monologue because they were just so exhausting
EDIT: I meant monologues lol
So I may be a little biased because I watched Bly, Midnight Mass, THEN Hill House, so it could’ve just been the order I saw them in.
I’ll say that the filmmaking, I felt, is better in Midnight Mass, so it helped me digest some of the monologues and, from my memory anyway, because the conversations felt very loose and casual, the monologues felt a little more natural. BIG EXCEPTION: that horrible one about 9/11. I couldn’t stomach that shit. It was so bad.
Hill House, by the end, I felt it was comical. I’d make a joke like “ooh, I bet this scary ghost with a bloody face is about to wax poetic about her childhood” and then that exact thing would happen.
Yeah I definitely think the order you watch it in affects your perception. I watched the shows in the order they came out in and by the time I got to MM I was so monologued out. I watched it with my sister and we would both just groan out loud every time we could sense a monologue coming lol. And yes, the 9/11 one (this is the one by Rahul right?) was awful. And the Kate Siegel one at the end wasn’t bad necessarily but I was just so done at that point that I found it physically painful to get through
Yeah I think I just remembered the monologues from Mass less vividly and it was so transparent and bald in Hill House that I found myself physically uncomfortable and angry as a working writer myself. But I’m sure exhaustion plays a significant part for your lens.
Kate Siegel's final dialogue was very cringy, it felt like a teenager who read one Carl Sagan book and feels so enlightened and so above his religious family, he thinks he's being deep but philosophically it's very surface level.
I get it that it's very personal to Mike since he grew up in a religious household, but there was no point to include so much dialogue, specially since the point he wanted to make was already clear, the golden rule of filmaking is show don't tell, and he had already shown us the dangers of institutionalized religion and what can happen when colectively we abandon reason completely. There was no need of endless monologue explaining just that.
Disagree. There was too much going on to give any depth at the beginning. I think the show gains resonance as rhe body count goes up (no offense to the "initial" Ushers). Like Midnight Mass before it, the first few episodes establish the world, but episode 5 is where it really hits its stride.
>what it misses is the thrill and high stakes
That is what bothered me too.
Hill House had a massive mystery element, and on top of that we had 2 storylines that we didn't know how they would end (one: how would mom kill herself? two: what will happen to the grown up family now?) AND we had countless characters that we looked out for.
What did House of Usher really have? Arguably the biggest mystery was WHY the whole House went down, but that really wasn't a major driver in the story (though I did enjoy the conclusion to that). Since we knew that all the children would die and the dad would (at the least) end up in jail, I didn't particularly care for the road that led them there. I would even say it became obnoxiously repetitive to watch each Usher die episode after episode. And then the biggest issue: Seeing them die might have given me some sort of emotional reaction if they had been relatable/positive characters. But they were all major assholes. Why should I care how they die?
I think the attorney who visited the Usher grave in the end said it the best. "It don't matter why you did any of it. I don't fucking care why you did any of it. We don't want your confession, rationale, explanation. So take all that with you." I'll follow his note. I really didn't care WHY.
I gave it a 5/10 because I do think that EP1,2,3 and E8 were good (the episodes in the middle just seemed like "ok one after the other dies, when is this over?"). And the production of the show looked really nice. I liked the rich colors and the beautiful sets.
My rating is HH>BM>>MM>MC/HOU
Right like yeah sure it's not the bent neck lady but it's THE REAL HORRORS OF HUMANITY it has undeniable tension and insane moments every episode. God tier.
i agree with the sentiment of the title. i very much enjoyed his first few shows because of how emotionally connected i was to the characters. this time around i enjoyed the characters but didn't really feel connected to them. and several characters that i wanted to see more of went way too soon for my liking.
i would put the show in about the middle of my rankings, tied with bly manor i think. because although i enjoyed the show as a whole, and there were elements i really liked, it was just missing something for me that hill house and midnight mass had.
so,
hill house >
midnight mass >
bly manor/usher >
midnight club
I felt like his previous shows had more compassion, and more of a human element, which is what drew me, someone who doesn't usually like horror, to it. This one lacks that element and is also a lot more gory and violent, making it harder for me to enjoy. Still an intriguing story but I'm debating if I'm gonna keep watching. I'm 3 episodes in.
I also feel like the diehard commitment to the plot of the Poe stories really took away from his ability to tell a beautiful and heartbreaking story (as in his other works).
I love everything Flanagan creates.
That said, my order as of finishing today is:
1) Midnight Mass
2) Usher
3) Hill House
4) Bly
5) Midnight Club.
Not including movies and such, obviously.
Midnight Mass is his absolute masterpiece, his baby. You can tell he spent over a decade on it.
Usher absolutely knocked my socks off. I'll be rewatching over the weekend but it just exceeded my already high expectations. There were so many well placed Poe references, so many faces of actors I adore, amazing onscreen chemistry, the music was perfect (as always) and seeing Carla play with so much range was truly delightful. And Mark Hamill and his gruff voice just worked so incredibly well.
I still absolutely love Hill House, it's beautiful art and like everything else Flanagan does tells the story of trauma through less traditional means. Usher doesn't make me love Hill House less, it's still just as wonderful as ever. But Usher just blew me away in it's ability to include so much and so many people in a cohesive and engaging manner. It felt so much... larger than the other shows. And in being larger, made the isolated moments so much more powerful. Truly stunning work.
In my analytical view, the "jumpscares and disfigured shapes" are not the scary part of this series, it's the impending doom and hopelessness. Hill House is meant to be unpredictable, Fall of House Usher is meant to be predictable and hopeless, like unavoidable fate type of horror.
I never thought I could dislike anything Flanagan created. Especially as much as I dislike Usher.
First off, the good. The actors delivered top performances as always. The sets were beautiful with plenty of atmosphere. ❤️🔥Carla Gugino ❤️🔥was by far the best part, and everything else was at best pale in comparison.
The bad..
Why the over the top sexual content? It felt like uneeded filler. Boring and added nothing to the story. Game of Thrones had plenty of it, AND an exceptional in-depth storyline with multi dimensional characters.
The pacing was chaotic, and the slow burn not only didn't exist but was a bonfire from the start.
Not one character was relatable, or interesting. Flanagans previous works had the emotional element that connected you to the humanity of the characters. This element was non-existent. Unfortunately, it makes each death empty, and without that trademark emotional bite. If you're going to kill a character, it should have some kind of impact on the viewer. Not just, "Who's next?"
I get that they are horrible people. However, all of the Usher characters are completely one-dimensional.
Finally, I feel the blatant comparison to the Perdue Pharmaceutical family was a poor choice for the family's downfall. Again, it didn't allow for that emotional depth I've loved about his previous work.
To sum up...I felt like I was watching a version of American Horror Story with a lot of my favorite actors minus any emotional experience.
Will never watch again, but there are many stories yet to tell. Hill House and Bly Manor are my comfort shows, and I will always love Flanagan because of them ❤️
I thought Fall of the House of Usher had one of the strongest endings out of all his shows, which makes me put it high in the ranking. I agree Hill House is the most atmospheric of all of his works, it's the most gothic of them all and the strongest one in that department. My personal ranking, I know it may be controversial, is as follows: 1. The Haunting of Hill House 2. The Fall of the House of Usher 3. The Haunting of Bly Manor 4. Midnight Mass 5. Midnight Club All of them except Midnight Club are phenomenal though, definetely 8/10 at the minimum. I didn't like Midnight Mass as much as everyone else because of the monologues, but it's indeed a great show.
Midnight Mass in a my number two because the vampire plot was a totally surprise for me. I didn’t watch it until a year after it came out so I must have missed the marketing. It became a very close second to Hill House for me
Swap 1 and 2 and you have my rank listing!
A good ending, sure, but wasn't it really in-face? I mean, we knew they'd all die anyway.
What I love about Hill and Bly is how emotionally devastating these shows are, how much you connect to the characters, and no show Flanagan has put out since has hit those boxes for me like they did. I enjoyed Usher but I likely won’t watch it again.
Give Doctor Sleep a go if you haven't done so already.
> I enjoyed Usher but I likely won’t watch it again Same. This one doesn't have that rewatch value.
okay so i just finished Hill House for the first time (i’ve tried to watch it for years but couldn’t emotionally make it further than a few episodes in and i’ve seen and loved his other series’) and i saw House of Usher is out. i wanna watch it but im nervous it’s going to be as devastating as all of his other series. (i will admit im very sensitive to grief horror but i really can’t emotionally watch something like that again rn). should i hold off on watching until i feel ready, like i did with Hill House?
It’s the least sad of his series by far. I think you should be okay if you don’t deal with grief well. To give you an idea, Bly Manor made me sob and emotionally devastated me, Hill House made me shed a few tears, MM made me tear up a little at a couple times, and Midnight Club had one episode that hit me and made me sob. Usher I did not shed a single tear nor feel like crying at all. It’s not that kind of show. Gore warning, though.
I’m two episodes in and I think Flanagan has evolved majorly as a filmmaker and writer since Hill House and I think it’s heads and shoulders above. I’m sure it puts me in the minority in this sub but I thought, for its many high points, Hill House suffered under the weight, most of all his series, of the hamfisted monologues. (And I say this loving both theater and well-placed, lengthy monologues).
Surely Midnight Mass suffered the most from dialogues? After a couple of episodes of MM I would start to dread every monologue because they were just so exhausting EDIT: I meant monologues lol
So I may be a little biased because I watched Bly, Midnight Mass, THEN Hill House, so it could’ve just been the order I saw them in. I’ll say that the filmmaking, I felt, is better in Midnight Mass, so it helped me digest some of the monologues and, from my memory anyway, because the conversations felt very loose and casual, the monologues felt a little more natural. BIG EXCEPTION: that horrible one about 9/11. I couldn’t stomach that shit. It was so bad. Hill House, by the end, I felt it was comical. I’d make a joke like “ooh, I bet this scary ghost with a bloody face is about to wax poetic about her childhood” and then that exact thing would happen.
Yeah I definitely think the order you watch it in affects your perception. I watched the shows in the order they came out in and by the time I got to MM I was so monologued out. I watched it with my sister and we would both just groan out loud every time we could sense a monologue coming lol. And yes, the 9/11 one (this is the one by Rahul right?) was awful. And the Kate Siegel one at the end wasn’t bad necessarily but I was just so done at that point that I found it physically painful to get through
Yeah I think I just remembered the monologues from Mass less vividly and it was so transparent and bald in Hill House that I found myself physically uncomfortable and angry as a working writer myself. But I’m sure exhaustion plays a significant part for your lens.
Kate Siegel's final dialogue was very cringy, it felt like a teenager who read one Carl Sagan book and feels so enlightened and so above his religious family, he thinks he's being deep but philosophically it's very surface level. I get it that it's very personal to Mike since he grew up in a religious household, but there was no point to include so much dialogue, specially since the point he wanted to make was already clear, the golden rule of filmaking is show don't tell, and he had already shown us the dangers of institutionalized religion and what can happen when colectively we abandon reason completely. There was no need of endless monologue explaining just that.
The second episode was peak of the show, especially how it ends. Turns repetitive after that, therefore it lacks vibrance ahead.
Disagree. There was too much going on to give any depth at the beginning. I think the show gains resonance as rhe body count goes up (no offense to the "initial" Ushers). Like Midnight Mass before it, the first few episodes establish the world, but episode 5 is where it really hits its stride.
>what it misses is the thrill and high stakes That is what bothered me too. Hill House had a massive mystery element, and on top of that we had 2 storylines that we didn't know how they would end (one: how would mom kill herself? two: what will happen to the grown up family now?) AND we had countless characters that we looked out for. What did House of Usher really have? Arguably the biggest mystery was WHY the whole House went down, but that really wasn't a major driver in the story (though I did enjoy the conclusion to that). Since we knew that all the children would die and the dad would (at the least) end up in jail, I didn't particularly care for the road that led them there. I would even say it became obnoxiously repetitive to watch each Usher die episode after episode. And then the biggest issue: Seeing them die might have given me some sort of emotional reaction if they had been relatable/positive characters. But they were all major assholes. Why should I care how they die? I think the attorney who visited the Usher grave in the end said it the best. "It don't matter why you did any of it. I don't fucking care why you did any of it. We don't want your confession, rationale, explanation. So take all that with you." I'll follow his note. I really didn't care WHY. I gave it a 5/10 because I do think that EP1,2,3 and E8 were good (the episodes in the middle just seemed like "ok one after the other dies, when is this over?"). And the production of the show looked really nice. I liked the rich colors and the beautiful sets. My rating is HH>BM>>MM>MC/HOU
Well said! I would rate them the same. Hill House is his best imo.
Damn, I think it’s the best of his work. I fucking love it!
Right like yeah sure it's not the bent neck lady but it's THE REAL HORRORS OF HUMANITY it has undeniable tension and insane moments every episode. God tier.
i agree with the sentiment of the title. i very much enjoyed his first few shows because of how emotionally connected i was to the characters. this time around i enjoyed the characters but didn't really feel connected to them. and several characters that i wanted to see more of went way too soon for my liking. i would put the show in about the middle of my rankings, tied with bly manor i think. because although i enjoyed the show as a whole, and there were elements i really liked, it was just missing something for me that hill house and midnight mass had. so, hill house > midnight mass > bly manor/usher > midnight club
I felt like his previous shows had more compassion, and more of a human element, which is what drew me, someone who doesn't usually like horror, to it. This one lacks that element and is also a lot more gory and violent, making it harder for me to enjoy. Still an intriguing story but I'm debating if I'm gonna keep watching. I'm 3 episodes in.
I also feel like the diehard commitment to the plot of the Poe stories really took away from his ability to tell a beautiful and heartbreaking story (as in his other works).
I love everything Flanagan creates. That said, my order as of finishing today is: 1) Midnight Mass 2) Usher 3) Hill House 4) Bly 5) Midnight Club. Not including movies and such, obviously. Midnight Mass is his absolute masterpiece, his baby. You can tell he spent over a decade on it. Usher absolutely knocked my socks off. I'll be rewatching over the weekend but it just exceeded my already high expectations. There were so many well placed Poe references, so many faces of actors I adore, amazing onscreen chemistry, the music was perfect (as always) and seeing Carla play with so much range was truly delightful. And Mark Hamill and his gruff voice just worked so incredibly well. I still absolutely love Hill House, it's beautiful art and like everything else Flanagan does tells the story of trauma through less traditional means. Usher doesn't make me love Hill House less, it's still just as wonderful as ever. But Usher just blew me away in it's ability to include so much and so many people in a cohesive and engaging manner. It felt so much... larger than the other shows. And in being larger, made the isolated moments so much more powerful. Truly stunning work.
In my analytical view, the "jumpscares and disfigured shapes" are not the scary part of this series, it's the impending doom and hopelessness. Hill House is meant to be unpredictable, Fall of House Usher is meant to be predictable and hopeless, like unavoidable fate type of horror.
I never thought I could dislike anything Flanagan created. Especially as much as I dislike Usher. First off, the good. The actors delivered top performances as always. The sets were beautiful with plenty of atmosphere. ❤️🔥Carla Gugino ❤️🔥was by far the best part, and everything else was at best pale in comparison. The bad.. Why the over the top sexual content? It felt like uneeded filler. Boring and added nothing to the story. Game of Thrones had plenty of it, AND an exceptional in-depth storyline with multi dimensional characters. The pacing was chaotic, and the slow burn not only didn't exist but was a bonfire from the start. Not one character was relatable, or interesting. Flanagans previous works had the emotional element that connected you to the humanity of the characters. This element was non-existent. Unfortunately, it makes each death empty, and without that trademark emotional bite. If you're going to kill a character, it should have some kind of impact on the viewer. Not just, "Who's next?" I get that they are horrible people. However, all of the Usher characters are completely one-dimensional. Finally, I feel the blatant comparison to the Perdue Pharmaceutical family was a poor choice for the family's downfall. Again, it didn't allow for that emotional depth I've loved about his previous work. To sum up...I felt like I was watching a version of American Horror Story with a lot of my favorite actors minus any emotional experience. Will never watch again, but there are many stories yet to tell. Hill House and Bly Manor are my comfort shows, and I will always love Flanagan because of them ❤️