Stars: 3.5/5
As the first followup to Netflix’s highly hailed “The Haunting of Hill House” hitting on Halloween last year, hopes were high for Bly (say all that five times fast). Audiences adored Mike Flanagan’s attention to detail with understated ghosts lurking in the corner of shots or unsettling places within the house. It stands apart from popular horror nowadays by building and following lovable and hateable, but undoubtedly believable characters. While sporting a beautiful new take on what a haunted house can mean, “The Haunting of Bly Manor” and its predecessor alike refuse to lean on the crutch of the paranormal, instead allowing compelling characters and talented actors to shine through.
In the same way Hill House had its own unworldly laws of time and attraction, Bly Manor reeks with a supernatural hatred transcending the rules of death itself. With its uniqueness comes excellently relevant vocabulary and terms coined by various characters or the narrator to discuss the manor’s bizarre phenomena. Spirits stay because Bly is a “gravity well” of sorts, aimlessly wandering through one’s own mind is “dream hopping,” and having one’s consciousness distracted in the stasis of their own memories is being “tucked away in a dream.”
“The Haunting” series sets similar precedents as “American Horror Story,” most prominently in exploring settings and scares irrelevant to the story told in the first season. Flanagan also recast many of the same actors from Hill House for very different roles in the second series and likely those to follow as AHS does.
This format of long running and plot driven horror bears far more artistic expectations than the jumpscare-riddled thriller/horror movies teens watch on first dates. In this sense, “The Haunting of Bly Manor” makes no attempt to rush the action thanks to the time afforded it to lay the foundation for twists and turns in the audience’s understanding of the situation. It grants the viewer incredibly little omniscience until exposition is absolutely necessary to make sense of circumstance.
On the flip side, the story is very slow, dragging its feet on the development of a pivotal character. In fairness, Viola Willoughby (Kate Siegel) lived and “died” at Bly almost 400 years prior to Dani Clayton’s (Victoria Pendretti) time there as the au pair. However, the entire second to last episode exclusively tells her tragic tale just in time for her to emerge as a conflict-driving device. Before that, Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas) merited exactly one episode explaining his aversion to directly caring for his orphaned nephew and niece, Miles (Benjamin Ainsworth) and Flora (Amelie Smith), respectively. These instances break the far more impressive habit exhibited elsewhere in the series of sowing the seeds of an idea and expanding upon it through brilliantly subtle dialogue hints and offhanded reference.
By virtue of a haunted house story, there are stories to be told for every spirit left loitering about the halls in undeath, regardless of their interference with the living. Haunted houses are interesting due to their residents, not their spookily antiquated furniture and lack of modern appliances. Hill House’s ghosts had names, stories and personalities. Poppy Hill revealed herself to mother Crain and set in motion the events that break up and irrevocably damage the Crain family. Others like William Hill and the Bent-Neck Lady manifest to terrify or torment the Crain children and implant themselves as childhood trauma for relevance in their adult lives. Bly’s apparitions only share their pre-death occupation and physical appearance with the viewer and do minimal meddling.
I think “The Haunting of Bly Manor” crippled itself with its ambition and stretched itself too thin over too many different narratives. Fleshing out a character prominently featured in the main plot by showing intervalled backstory is appropriate, as was the case with Mrs. Grose and Owen in the early episodes. Breaking away from the climax of the show for an episode that gives depth to a character only familiar in concept (which is all that’s needed considering their situation) and essentially unseen beforehand. Leaving her enigmatic and fleetingly but drastically important would showcase the same intentional ignorance of the dead that viewers had to come to expect. It started strong, focusing on the primary plot and slowly uncovering tidbits about the events preceding Dani’s arrival. This time still seeded many heartstopping realizations and character actions worth experiencing, but the conclusion is far less satisfying and optimistic than the show’s time at Hill House.
