Well acted and creepy so far. Not sure why anyone would expect the whole kitchen sink in episode 1.
[6.7/10] My first impression of this show is that it’s a season-length version of The Conjuring, with some back-and-forth in time business for flavor. And that held up through the first episode. You have the big family, the creepy old house, the mom who goes crazy, and in the present (or “now” as it were) some ghost-hunting. I feel the same way about this episode as I did about that movie: there’s some interesting ideas at play, and the visuals and atmosphere are well done, but I just cannot get into the characters are the writing.
I’m willing to cut The Haunting of Hill House a little slack out of the gate here, since it has to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of introducing a number of characters in two different timeframes and hint at enough of the story without giving everything away. I’ll admit, it took me until at least halfway through the episode before I was even clear on how many, similar-looking siblings there were and where everyone was. That’s not necessarily the show’s fault, as it commendably tried to avoid straight up exposition, and instead left us to piece things together, but that makes it easy to spend more of the runtime attempting to keep the family relations straight then just letting the story wash over.
At the same time, these characters are all pretty dull in the early going. Granted, most of them are barely sketched out given the necessity of introducing five siblings, two parents, and various other supporting characters in the span of 60 minutes. But even Steven and Sheryl, who seem the closest to being main characters, feel pretty flat in the early going. The show makes some hay out of the fact that Steven is a writer of ghost stories who doesn't believe in ghosts, but his presence is just so mute that it’s hard to feel any sort of investment in the character.
Plus, the episode is filled to the brim with overwritten monologues and tin-eared dialogue. Every speech in this episode, from the widow’s description of her nightmare to Steve’s responsive explanation of what the mind sees or the meaning of “supernatural,” to his mom’s description of his religious education just screams, “I’m some guy hunching over my laptop trying to be profound.” The actress who plays the widow in particular sells it like hell, but the words are so unnatural that it dampens the viewer’s ability to process the characters as human beings. With tepid dialogue and flat performances in the opening frame, it’s really hard for me to get on board.
That said, there’s some really good work visually in the opening episode. While there’s a certain washed out, almost sepia-toned tinge to everything. There’s creative transitions between past and present, cool effects and makeup on the ghouls and goblins, and some striking framing and blocking for individual scenes. I have to admit, most of the scares didn’t really get me, but a lot of them rely on fairly old horror tricks, so maybe I’m just inured to them.
Overall, not a particularly promising start, but there’s a lot of throat-clearing here, so I’m willing to give the show some room to grow now that it has that out of the way.
Nothing happening at all, very mediocre.
dont like it like this boring haunted movies :/
And all the chars are dull
One of the best productions from Netflix! Well written characters, creepy story and you invest in what happens to them. Enjoyed every episode!
This first episode was mostly character development and build up which is a given, but it has me caught. I'm pretty intrigued and excited to see where all this goes. I'm glad to see Michiel Huisman and Elizabeth Reaser as main characters in this show. The overall acting from everyone has been good.
A decent beginning. The potential for the series is evident as past and present tables are set and we spend time getting to know the eldest Crain child, Steven. He's an author who's not a believer in the spooky subject matter of his own successful books...until the very end of the episode. And that was a nice way to leave things.
It’s subtle with the spooky sequences, takes it’s time introducing interesting characters. It’s fricking goosebumps chills scary a few times in this episode even when they just tell you what they have seen. I really liked that. Boy I have to watch the other episodes earlier in the day not at midnight xD
Damn, that show is SO good.
Watching this series for the second time around and really appreciating the cinematography. The framing of scenes with these wide spaces that draw your eye, using those tropes against us and making us paranoid of what's going on in the background. Just fantastic.
Fuck!!! The last scene got me shock!!!
I did not see that coming.
Nell is going to give us some entertainment, I guess.
boring as hell, nothing happened.
and bad timing
Slow (but that's to be expected) but interesting enough start. And high production quality. Discreet horror, not too strong on the jump scare, that's a good sign.
The format seems to be alternating present and flashbacks. We know something happened, but we'll only discover it little by little.
A common failure with this format is that because, as viewers, we don't know what happened in the past as the present event occur, a lot of suspenseful stuff happens. But contrary to us, the characters have already experienced the past events that will only be revealed to us at the end,and they should be behaving according to this experience, not if they discovered it at the same time we see the flashbacks. And very often the movie/show will fail to do so. Very often, when you reach the end, what is revealed from the past renders most the characters' behavior at the beginning totally incoherent. Hoping they avoid that here.
So Steve, became a horror author. A bit cliche, but ok. However he never saw anything and seems quite good at identifying the rational explanation. Cool. Makes the final scene with Nell even better.
Shirley coped by being a mortician. That's a nice one.
And Luke by becoming an addict. Classic. High future suicide potential.
The night club girl is a sister too ? I don't think we saw her as a kid in the intro ?
So obviously something happened in the house. For now it seems like regular haunting story, plus either the mother going crazy and/or the father killing her. And classically something weird with the help that probably know too much.
wasn't aware there'd be so many jumpscares
8/10
Great start
for my second time around
with this phenomenal show,
Love how it's playing out
and man some of them scenes are
Bone Chilling,
It definitely knows how to put
across the scares,
It's going to be so much fun
trying to find all 30 ghosts
hidden throughout the entire show.
My 31 days of Horror continues
(October 2023)
An okay start, slow but effectively creepy. I'm glad it's not full of dumb jump scares. Hard to get much of a feeling about the characters this early, but it does feel like there are a lot of them. Notably, all the female cast members look alike (nice casting giving them all a resemblance to Carla Gugino) and I was struggling to tell them apart.
Yeesh. One episode and I am out. I got better things to do than sit through this.
It's been good, it's good about the 2 times, the past and the present, for now, I'm still seeing
oh my god that ending! loved it!
OH MY GOD SHES A GHOST BITCH
A good first episode.
One must consider, this being a netflix-show - meaning, you have to expect a slow pace.
And they really got me with that last scare...
I second the boring mess.
Shout by kinkyVIP EP 6BlockedParent2018-10-14T04:08:58Z
Not much happened, but it has the right amount of creepiness and it doesn't rely on jump scares alone. It actually manages to build up an eerie and tense ambience that makes you feel uncomfortable while watching the episode. It reminded me of Insidious because of that, something I consider to be a good thing.
I wasn't thrilled by this first episode, but I'm intrigued enough to keep watching the rest of the season.
I just wish I hadn't watched this right before going to bed... Sigh!