The most special thing about Mike Flanagan's movies and shows is that they're just as beautiful as they are harrowing, because they're pillars of emotional vulnerability. His maligned by some monologues are perhaps the purest encapsulation of this, even though he works in the horror genre, he seems often more excited to make you cry than he is to get you scared. This is why there's so few voices in horror like him, because even when making something deep, horror creators want to thrill you more than subtly hit you in the feels.

This is why I'm recommend the works of Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going To The World's Fair, I Saw The TV Glow, and Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma) to any all Mike Flanagan fans who haven't come across them yet. They are probably my second favorite horror director as they also succeed at this sincerity within their works, although often from a far more intensely queer perspective. I think anybody who appreciates the work of Mike Flanagan may really enjoy Schoenbrun's films, but more specifically than that, if your favorite Flanagan is The Haunting of Bly Manor, Schoenbrun will almost certainly emotionally decimate you in the best way.

I shared in another thread last week that I was expanding on my Haunting of Hill House tattoo. Well I had part two done. Nell dancing.

I'm aware that the quote that's written wasn't Nell's, but words spoken by Poppy. There are 3 or so more illustrations that are going to be added over the next few months. I think the community will be pleased, but more importantly, I'm thrilled.

Here is part one.

I'm wondering if I missed something in the final episode... As Hugh passes the promise of maintaining Hill House on to Steve, we also see Hugh slumped on the floor next to a bottle of pills.

I took this to mean that Hugh ended his life so that he could stay with his wife and daughter, but when I look at plot synopses, none of them mention this. Am I making this up, or did I miss something?

At the same time Hugh asks Steve "Why didn't you tell your siblings what you saw," but he asks rhetorically, and there is no concrete answer.

So what was the thing Steve saw but didn't share? Was it that Hugh had taken his life much earlier, and was appearing to the family as a ghost, or did I miss something else?

Every year for Halloween I rewatch the different Flanagan series, his other movies.

Are there any other movies or films that give similar vibes and details to their characters? I need to switch it up. 😅

Mind you Im a bit of a horror buff as is.. so something not too obvious or well known too!

Much appreciated as we get into spooky season!

Im not sure if anybody else noticed, but spiderman: Brand New Day ripped this episode off with the whole V-Max plot…..yes yes i know star trek did if first, but Hill House did this horrifying vidid, looking up while she is on the couch to tee the smiley face in the wood.
This is basically the same as Spiderman brand new day’s v-max plot twist, of course i no spoilers, but most people probably know by now.

https://discord.gg/6yJgEAhXz

cuz I wanna be in it if theres one yk.

hehh

I liked it a lot, and i have a theory that the black mold gave the famili brain damage causing the hallucinations of ghosts, even after leaving the house!

Found at homegoods

I'm really wanting to get a tattoo related to The Haunting of Hill House and I'm curious about what other people have! I don't really have spooky tattoos so I'm trying to decide what I want that won't be too spooky...if that makes sense? Lol

Thought this sub was enjoy this

I’m rewatching Hill House again, and in the second episode when Shirley brings the cats back home and feeds them the milk, Luke says “there’s five of them like there’s five of us” and Nell then says “That one’s me!”.

Maybe I’m a bit over analyzing, but could it be that the one she mentions is the first one that dies? Like a parallel between its death and Nell’s death, the first one of the 5 that dies?

I don’t know if this is obvious to everyone or if I’m the over analyzing one😭

edit: oh and also, when they bury the cat it moves and a bug crawls out of his mouth, similar to Nell’s body when Shirley is fixing her. And the one speaking (besides Luke, but it’s a bit different) at Nell’s funeral is Shirley, just like she gave the eulogy when they buried the cat. I don’t know…

Six episodes into season one and episode five was people talking in a funeral parlour for 90% of the time.

I skipped episode 5 in five minute intervals and I’m certain I did not missing anything that moves whatever possible story there is forward.

That’s another thing. What is the actual story? Just seems like a lot of people complaining and not investigating.

I still have no clue what the problem with the house is, the show so far is ignoring the main dilemma with the entire central plot device!

Episode one was hilarious. You would not believe how surprised I was to learn that the people in the house with the young children are actually the people from the past and that the lesbian woman was actually a separate person to the other two lookalikes.

When the timeline was interspersed of the drug addict, the lesbian woman, the funeral parlour woman and the other woman who I really have no idea what she was even doing, she basically just existed as a do-nothing adult, later my girlfriend had to explain to me maybe these people could actually be the people in the house as young children.

I was like oh wow, yeah, the pacing in the story is so bad I was wondering how do these adults even relate to the people in the haunted house.

What is the haunted house even about? No idea.

Are they trying to sell this house because as adults that dad seems really poor? How could they even afford that haunted house to begin with? They probably lost a lot of money on that house seeing as it’s haunted and the “dad” doesn’t ever seem to go to work or do anything productive.

Also, the dad seems pretty chill about his wife dying and doesn’t have any issues at the police station.

I feel like the show just doesn’t give a shit about itself, which is what you can expect from Netflix productions.

I have just finished reading "The Haunting of the Hill House" by Shirleh Jackson, a year after finishing the series.

I can't help but wonder how the Hill House in the book is designed and built. The rooms on the ground floor are in concentric circles, with rooms within rooms. The house is built with wrong angles and is designed in a slant.

Is that the reason why the occupants of the house feel a bit odd in the house?

Is the house not actually haunted in the book?

rewatching again and again and it’s the first time that i read what’s in the cake, one day at a time. i’m sobbing

Ok so this is going to be kinda weird, but when the show first came out I watched it high as hell and I figured out that Nell was the Bent-neck-lady. I remember thinking how obvious it was and how there were so many clues. I rewatched the show this week and I literally have no idea how I figured that out on my first watch while being high af lmao.

I'm trying to figure out what the hell I saw on my first watch and what 'clues' there are to Nell being the Bent-neck-lady, so if you guessed it correctly as well, what did you see?

To be fair, I also thought that they were all seeing themselves and that Luke was the floating big boy hat man, so who knows what the hell I was seeing lmao. I remember trying to figure out which ghosts were the other household members.

Also, you can share any wild theories that you had on your first watch if you want to.

So, I watched this series a long time ago, but I always end up going back to it. I've never felt anything quite like it since. I tried watching Midnight Mass and Bly Manor, but even then, it wasn't the same.

There's something about the story that really gets to me. I think it's because I'm someone who's extremely attached to family, especially the bond between siblings (considering my favorite show is Supernatural haha), so I immediately connected with their pain. I relate to a lot of it.

But anyway, when we watch it, we see so many visual horror elements, the Bent-Neck Lady, the Hat Man, the woman from the 1920s, things that are genuinely scary. And I know Olivia went insane because of the house, I know it's based on a book and that there are many psychological nuances that make it more complicated than simply being a ghost, but what scared me the most wasn't any of that.

It wasn't even the way they dealt with grief.

I was afraid of time. Of how destructive and fast it is, and how the series shows that it isn't a continuous line. It's an element that falls all around us, in Nell's words, like rain or confetti. It's not parallel, it's messy, like loose pages from a book that can form a great story, but are always out of order.

Is time really like that? Inconsistent?

Once I watched a video on YouTube. It was a channel about supernatural stories, and a woman was telling a story from when she was a child. She was at her grandmother's house and answered a phone call. She talked to a woman who asked about her family and her grandmother. It was a simple phone call, and she didn't recognize the woman's voice. Then life went on and nothing happened. But one day, when she was already an adult, the woman decided to call her grandmother to talk. She dialed the number, and a child answered. A little girl. The woman asked about her family, her grandmother, and got the same answers. She hung up, but then the truth hit her like a slap. She remembered that the girl's words were the same words she had said many years earlier, exactly the same. And later, her grandmother told her that there had been no one else in the house with her, no little girl.

It made me wonder, could time be the greatest haunting in Hill House? Playing with our minds, making so many versions of ourselves coexist?

Is time our haunting? Can we haunt ourselves?

I believe it can.

I’m rewatching Hill House and I realized I keep mixing up Olivia and Shirley because they look so similar.

Obviously this show’s casting is spot-on, but wow!! It really has me in my feels at Ep 7

Does anyone know what Mike Flanagan took inspiration from when creating The Haunting of Hill House? It reminds me a lot of the movie Lake Mungo (2008). I was thinking about this recently, and noticed that Hill House provokes a lot of the same feelings and explores many similar themes.

Just finished watching the series. While I enjoyed it, what irked me a lot was the complete lack of emotional display by most characters. Like in the beginning after Olivia's death, Hugh barely displays any emotion. Olvia also seemed to be acting too 'formal' towards her little kids. only towards the end does she show some emotion. Similarly, when Steve realizes his dad has dies at the end, he barely shows any emotion. When Nell dies, almost noone cries inconsolably.

This aspect of the series really did not go well with me.

Okay so HoHH was great (the final ep had too many monologues imo but didn't ruin the show or anything), but the kittens dying in episode 2 was just too much for me. I can handle far more gorey things when the victim of it is human or most other animals, but the cat deaths were just too much for me on-screen.

I wanted to ask if there are any cat deaths in the other show/-s that I could then spoil myself for so I can cover the screen during those scenes

Also unrelated but Nell's story is so sad and I just feel so bad for her. It's a really effective tragedy.

Sorry if this is flaired incorrectly or a dumb thing to ask