Ah, yes, yet another horror series to delight and frighten is on the horizon, but this one has some deeper roots than most. Netflix’s upcoming show, The Haunting of Hill House, is based on a classic horror novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson. And while the adaptation is…very, very loose, it is interesting to see just where they’re going with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9OzG53VwIk
The show follows a family, made up of two parents and five kids, living in a dark and macabre house called, you guessed it, Hill House. The kids are terrified of the house, which spooks and scares them at any moment, and this exposure to the supernatural traumatizes them permanently. We see that the show will have a lot of time jumps back and forth between the siblings as children and as adults, the latter of whom must return to the house after tragedy strikes.
The adaptation is being helmed by Mike Flanagan, who also adapted Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game for Netflix a while back. His take is a huge departure from the novel, which followed a paranormal investigator and three volunteers in order to study the phenomenon. The book was less terrifying ghosts and visions, and more general, gothic dread and darkness.
We don’t get a lot of details in the trailers, so it might be that these kids are the Sandersons, who inherit Hill House in the novel. However, there’s no indication that the series will follow the book at all, so it’s all up in the air. Either way, the visuals are dark, the atmosphere thick and tinged with terror, and the actors (as much as we see them) seem up to the task of terrifying the audience. The first season of the show will feature ten episodes.
The Haunting of Hill House will premiere on Netflix on October 12, 2018.
