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Netflix announces The Haunting of Bly Manor, an anthology sequel to Hill House


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It will star many of the same actors, but in a new story with new characters. Very interesting!

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/08/haunting-of-bly-manor-hill-house

 

Quote

“The process is the same, in that it’s a literary remix,” Macy said. “You want to update the story, you want to find whatever fertile ground for elevating the character that you can in the source material, but we obviously took some liberties in updating it with a more modern setting.”


Some of the cast of Hill House has returned, but they’re each playing different parts this time. Bly Manor takes place mostly in 1987, starring Victoria Pedretti, the doomed sister Nell of Hill House, now playing the sunny American tutor Dani Clayton, who hopes to escape her own painful past by taking a job at the stately mansion looking after the Wingrave children—volatile Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, 11) and cheerful Flora (Amelie Bea Smith, 9).


“Victoria and I talked at the very beginning about how to differentiate this character from Nell. Nell was a character that carried around a ton of darkness with her and never quite got out of the shadows that she was introduced in when we see her as a child,” Flanagan said. “Between the setting in the ’80s, and this idea of a young American abroad, just out on an adventure, it brightened everything up to begin with.”


That’s just the veneer, of course. A creeping shadow gradually spreads over Bly Manor and its inhabitants.

 

I really enjoyed the atmosphere of Hill House, so I am looking forward to this.

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Seems like they’re trying the American Horror Story approach (anthology seasons, recurring actors). Hopefully they’ll maintain a higher level of quality with “The Haunting of...” As long as Flannigan stays involved, that should be pretty easy to do. 

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The only thing that bothers me about the idea of the anthology horror using the same actors like AMH is that after a while, AMH tried bringing back previous characters, who were also played by current season actors, and it got really confusing and pretty stupid. Hopefully this one will bring entirely different characters and stories without tying into a "connected universe" and relying on old 'remember this person?' gimmicks.

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38 minutes ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

The only thing that bothers me about the idea of the anthology horror using the same actors like AMH is that after a while, AMH tried bringing back previous characters, who were also played by current season actors, and it got really confusing and pretty stupid. Hopefully this one will bring entirely different characters and stories without tying into a "connected universe" and relying on old 'remember this person?' gimmicks.

 

This is Mike Flanagan, not Ryan Murphy, I don't think we'll have to worry about that (I hope).

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Oddly enough I finally gave Hill House another try over the weekend. When I originally started watching it I wasn't really feeling it, though to be honest I had been exhausted at the time and dozed on and off so I now I was missing things. Decided to set it aside to watch another time and then this weekend I was in the mood for some horror and after watching a couple of movies finally remembered Hill House. I'm now 3 or 4 (heck maybe 5) episodes in and enjoying the heck out of it. 

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2 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

Also, this season is apparently based on The Turn of the Screw, a 1898 horror novella that is the basis for a lot of modern horror and ghost stories.

We knew this from the first announcement.

 

I've got that collection of short stories, still debating on reading it before the show. Not that it should matter much, since Hill House was almost nothing like the book.

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3 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

Also, this season is apparently based on The Turn of the Screw, a 1898 horror novella that is the basis for a lot of modern horror and ghost stories.

 

 

I have to say. I know the story is considered a classic, but I personally always found it boring and could never understood where the actual 'horror' was within it. That being said, I am fairly certain the translation into film is likely to be damn good. 

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  • 1 month later...

Watched first two episode. Good so far. I think it’s a slower burn and not as scary so far (intentional, it has less scares than the first season so far iirc). It’s definitely different from Hill house which I like. If it felt like hill house 2.0 that’d be sort of a bummer. 

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9 minutes ago, johnny said:

Watched first two episode. Good so far. I think it’s a slower burn and not as scary so far (intentional, it has less scares than the first season so far iirc). It’s definitely different from Hill house which I like. If it felt like hill house 2.0 that’d be sort of a bummer. 

Haven't started, but this sounds fine to me. I prefer a good slow burn. In my opinion a lot of modern horror falls flat because they can't be arsed to set the mood properly. Horror isn't just jump scares and long haired girls crawling on all fours, and studios need to learn that. This isn't commentary on Haunted Hill, just horror in general.

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6 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I just watched the first episode last night. Is this really considred to be an anthology series? Seems to be telling one long story to me this season based on glancing at the episode list and discriptions.

People calling it an anthology (myself included) might be using that term incorrectly. I was thinking of this as season two of “The Haunting of...”, following Hill House. So telling a completely new story every season, not every episode. Technically, I suppose it’s just a new show (with the same naming convention, show runner, several returning cast members, and overall style :p)

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1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

I just watched the first episode last night. Is this really considred to be an anthology series? Seems to be telling one long story to me this season based on glancing at the episode list and discriptions.


I haven’t seen either. But I assumed it got the anthology tag based on the Seasons not the episodes. It’s doing something similar to American Horror Story. Same creators, similar naming convention and reusing many of the same actors to tell a new story each season. 

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Ok I may have misunderstood... I thought that this season (based on it being called an anthology) would be different stories per episode taking place in the titular Bly Manor. Something akin to Black Mirror or Twilight Zone. I watched the first episode fully expecting that episodes story to be wrapped up by the end of the episode and was a little surprised to see it continuing thoughout the season. If "The Haunting Of..." is the anthology and will take place in different locations each season, then calling the series an anthology wouldn't be incorrect I guess? I always thought an anthology was a collection of SHORT stories... it doesn't matter ultimately. My intial point was I expected the series to be different than what it was based on what I've seen so far. I enjoyed the episode for sure and will definitely try to finish the series by Halloween.

 

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It is a confusing little bit of nomenclature. The season-long anthology is a relatively new thing (American Horror Story, True Detective, and Fargo are probably the most prominent examples) and we don't really have a clean way to separate those from the more traditional anthology series. 

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Finished it this morning and loved it, and am very confused by the hate it's getting at Resetera and elsewhere. I think the biggest complaint I've seen is that "it's not scary," and that people were expecting Hill House x2 (which itself wasn't all that scary). Personally I loved the shift to Gothic Fiction from Horror. Gothic Fiction is one of my favourite genres, and to have the Byronic Hero (not sure if Danny 100% qualifies as one, but I think it's close enough) be a woman is a great shift, as well as having the love story be a more modern representation of the times.

 

Overall I loved the slow burn, the reveal in episode 5/6 of what was going on, and how it wrapped up. I am eagerly looking forward to season 3, and hope it keeps going in this direction, and also that Netflix doesn't pull a Netflix and cancel it.

 

 

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18 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Finished it this morning and loved it, and am very confused by the hate it's getting at Resetera and elsewhere. I think the biggest complaint I've seen is that "it's not scary," and that people were expecting Hill House x2 (which itself wasn't all that scary). Personally I loved the shift to Gothic Fiction from Horror. Gothic Fiction is one of my favourite genres, and to have the Byronic Hero (not sure if Danny 100% qualifies as one, but I think it's close enough) be a woman is a great shift, as well as having the love story be a more modern representation of the times.

 

Overall I loved the slow burn, the reveal in episode 5/6 of what was going on, and how it wrapped up. I am eagerly looking forward to season 3, and hope it keeps going in this direction, and also that Netflix doesn't pull a Netflix and cancel it.

 

 

I’m not surprised by the hate. They wanted to be scared like Hill House and were mad. This to me also shows the value of actual critics. They don’t get all pissed off because Rian Johnson ruined their childhood. 
 

I thought this season was extremely well done. The atmosphere is amazing and while the show isn’t scary, I do find it chilling. And Flanagan finishes the season strong imo where a lot of people criticized the end of Hill House. 
 

Flanagan has been on a roll ever since Oculus and has kept getting better and better. Netflix would be idiots to not keep it going. 
 

also shoutout to Amelia Eve and whoever found her. Fantastic job. And to think originally Peter Quint’s actor was supposed to play her role. 

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I’ve watched 7 episodes so far. I’m definitely enjoying it quite a bit, and don’t mind that it’s not outright scary. It does a pretty good job of maintaining a high level of tension/dread, which I enjoy. If I have a minor complaint, it would be the pacing. So far I feel like we could have lost almost a full episode and the show wouldn’t suffer. 

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Well, I absolutely love Turn of the Screw and The Innocents but having arrived at episode 7, I have to say I find this version to be a boring slog at this point. And again, I love the original story and film adaptation and many slow Gothic Horror novels and short stories, so it's certainly not that. I was extremely excited for this and very much welcomed the shift to pure Gothic but to me it feels like the material is being stretched to an absurd degree and worse, every 'reveal' somehow flounders and feels like a big shrug.  

 

I will add that I find the ultra color-saturated, soft-filter aesthetic totally off-putting to begin with and just on a basic visual level, the show lacks any atmosphere to me. The house and overall grounds feels just kind of...there...to me and lack any foreboding atmosphere and they even bungled the eerie 'woman across the pond' visual from The Innocents. It all has an oddly cheap and cheesy soap opera feel to me. I'm actually surprised how little anything works for me in this one.

 

I thought Haunting of Hill House was really great but this is a bafflingly huge swing and a miss for me unfortunately especially considering the greatness of its source material and The Innocents. 

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