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The upcoming limited series has a score of 97% on the review aggregator site – Flanagan's highest-scoring series since 2018's The Haunting of Hill House, which has a score of 93%. "Bloody, campy, and a far cry from Hill House and Bly Manor, The Fall of the House of Usher sees Mike Flanagan mix Edgar Allan Poe, American Horror Story, and Succession – and the result, while not perfect, is fun," reads GamesRadar+'s 3.5-star review. In November 2023, Roderick Usher, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, loses all six of his children within two weeks. Auguste Dupin, an Assistant United States Attorney who dedicated his career to exposing Fortunato's corruption, to his childhood home, where he tells the true story of his family and unveils the Ushers' darkest secrets.
The Fall of the House of Usher — Limited Series
However, Flanagan is smart enough to shift the Poe narratives ever so slightly for a modern audience. His version of The Tell-Tale Heart is a modern gem, and “The Gold-Bug” is reimagined as a new brand for the Usher company. But the themes remain the same—guilt, obsession, vengeance, and a supernatural sense of justice. Roderick Usher’s children are getting what they deserve, not merely because they are the fruit of a very poisoned tree but because they have made horrific decisions to stay in the shelter of wealth and privilege. It turns out that almost every branch of the Usher family tree has been cut by violent horror. ” “No, not before,” he replies in one of the show’s many glimpses of Flanagan’s viciously dark sense of humor.
Best Horror TV Shows (April
(Poe had one too.) Roderick has been haunted by all his awful children who have shuffled off this mortal coil, and it’s because it feels like the ghosts are finally coming for him that he is ready to confess. He’s having visions of monstrous ghosts, including the recurring specter of Verna (Carla Gugino), a figure that connects most of these tall tales as a sort of vengeful force of karma, the devil come to take what she’s due from a man who profited off the pain of others. The Fall of the House of Usher is an American gothic horror drama television miniseries created by Mike Flanagan. All eight episodes were released on Netflix on October 12, 2023, each directed by either Flanagan or Michael Fimognari, with the latter also acting as cinematographer for the entire series. Presenting vintage Poe stories filtered through Mike Flanagan's deliciously dark lens, The Fall of the House of Usher will get a rise out of horror fans.
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The Fall of the House of Usher Reviews: 'Deliciously Macabre' and 'Triumphant,' Critics Say - Rotten Tomatoes
The Fall of the House of Usher Reviews: 'Deliciously Macabre' and 'Triumphant,' Critics Say.
Posted: Tue, 10 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Some of the CGI, particularly one scene involving bodies falling from the sky, is unintentionally funny. Problematically, Flanagan tends to conflate queerness with depravity and sexual fluidity is punished here with an unnerving flourish. But the show remembers to be actually scary, with truly inspired uses of chimps, mirrors and sprinkler systems.
The new show lands on Netflix this week
Mike Flanagan takes on the works of Edgar Allan Poe in The Fall of the House of Usher, his final spooky outing at Netflix. The eight-episode series, which premieres to the streamer on Thursday, October 12, follows the bleak, gory, and darkly comedic downfall of pharmaceutical magnate Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) and his richly diverse (and richly despicable) family. “It has quite a lot of very dark humor, but also really touches the soul.” In the series, Gugino portrays a shape-shifter named Verna, whose origins can be traced back to a — let’s just say — very famous Poe character.
The Fall of the House of Usher — Limited Series, Episode 4
The Fall of the House of Usher is Flanagan’s take on Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story of the same name - but much like we saw with The Haunting of Hill House, Flanagan has added his own ‘fresh, freaky twist on it’. He took on Shirley Jackson in The Haunting of Hill House (which was fabulous), Henry James in The Haunting of Bly Manor (spooky but saccharine) and Christopher Pike in The Midnight Club (meh). Thankfully, Flanagan and Poe’s sensibilities prove a winning pairing, staying on the edge of terror without cascading into jump scares and sentimentality. Guilt permeates every frame of Flanagan’s Poe universe, and buys into not so much the horror as the terror. This has everything you want in a terrifying family drama; it features brilliant performances and some impressive scares.
Limited Series – The Fall of the House of Usher
There’s no question that The Fall of the House of Usher ranks among Flanagan’s finest works. Late one stormy night, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) invites an investigator named C. All of these nightmarish visions are attached to the family drama that Usher offers up for Dupin, giving the season a clever episodic structure in that each chapter intertwines a different Poe source into the overall saga of the Ushers. Another Mike Flanagan horror drama that excels and perfect to watch for the spooky season. "Usher" is among Flanagan’s best work because of the family dynamic and the well-assembled cast who bring complexity to characters that would otherwise be categorized as two-bit villains in lesser hands.
Netflix's The Fall of the House of Usher Boasts Impressive Early Rotten Tomatoes Rating - MovieWeb
Netflix's The Fall of the House of Usher Boasts Impressive Early Rotten Tomatoes Rating.
Posted: Sun, 24 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Dripping with gothic romanticism and boasting astounding performances from the entire ensemble – with a heightened level of unrelenting brutality from the director – it is once again, another Flanagan triumph. For fans of horror and adjacent genres, The Fall of the House of Usher is a delight from beginning to end, proving once again Flanagan’s reputation as a bankable showrunner.
The show lands on the streaming platform on Thursday 12 October - but the early reviews are in - and it's safe to say it’s a hit. Flanagan finishes his Netflix contract on a high, gleefully capturing Poe’s magic, eerie romance and sense of dread. His shows have become the streaming service’s best offerings for spooky season, and it is hard to imagine how that void will be filled. It’s not perfect – the order in which the Poe family meet their fates is a case of diminishing returns, as its most intriguing members are dispatched too quickly.
A respectful patchwork of Edgar Allan Poe stories and tropes, this Mike Flanagan miniseries tackles something more complex. Netflix's resident horror auteur is back with his take on Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. You'll have a good time — even if some of the nods to "sociopolitical relevance" might send your eyes rolling. In Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher, the preservation of mood pays proper homage to the author’s words. The show’s social commentary, in turn, allows a retelling of an old story to resonate powerfully in our current moment.
Usher has been reimagined as the head of a massive pharmaceutical company he runs with his twin sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell). Every episode includes flashbacks to a young Roderick (Zach Gilford), Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald), and Annabel Lee (Katie Parker), Roderick’s first wife. These fill in how the Ushers made their fortune, but they’re kind of a narrative drag. It’s important that Roderick and Madeline are cruel, selfish creatures—less so how they got that way. What’s more interesting is to watch how the fallout of their decisions fell on Roderick’s many children, all torn apart by some of Poe’s most memorable creations. Siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built a pharmaceutical company into an empire of wealth, privilege and power; however, secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty sta...
The first two episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher premiered at Fantastic Fest in September 2023 before the Netflix release the following month, being viewed more than 13 million times in its first two weeks. It was met with positive reviews, with critics praising its production values, directing, and performances (in particular from Gugino, Greenwood and Mark Hamill), although they were divided on its narrative, notably in relation to the source materials. Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) attends a joint funeral for a number of his adult children, and in a montage of press coverage, we see how a series of “freak accidents” has wiped out his entire bloodline. The Usher patriarch then sits in a dilapidated mansion with Carl Lumbly’s Auguste Dupin (based on Poe’s famous recurring character who is considered the first detective in fiction) and offers him a confession.
We then flash back a few weeks to when the Usher clan were on top of the world, having become Sackler-esque billionaires peddling opiates that have inflicted untold misery on the American public, and begin to watch their painful demise. When one steps back and looks at the whole narrative of the season of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” it sags in places. Most of the flashbacks to a young Usher and Dupin are thin, especially compared to the wicked fun on display in the fates of the Usher children. It feels like padding to get episodes to a full hour when Flanagan and company could have leaned even more into the episodic structure that highlights a single Poe per chapter. English majors will likely know where some of the stories are going just by seeing the episode names. When the young and trendy Prospero Usher (Sauriyan Sapkota) decides to host an exclusive sex-and-drugs party at one of dad’s old factories in an abbey, readers of The Masque of the Red Death will know it’s going to be a gruesome scene.
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