Posted by This morning Netflix released the trailer to their 10-part limited series version of Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House.” See it below.
First off, I’m incredibly excited.
I love Michael Flanagan. He’s not made a bad movie yet. From the underseen Absentia to last year’s thought to be unadaptable Gerald’s Game (also featuring the Haunting’s Carla Gugino), each has been incredibly well made and always surprising. So I’m wholly on board.
In addition, The Haunting of Hill House is one of my top ten books from a favorite author. (Here’s to the also adapted this year We Have Always Lived in the Castle release… eventually). Jackson’s prose, the opening and closing paragraphs of the novel in particular, is top-notch and the book unsettling as hell.
From the plot featured in the trailer, how Hill House affects a family who grew up in it, I think he read a different book than I did. But that could be fine, The Haunting has been adapted twice before. The one-of-the-best-films-ever Robert Wise version in 1963 and the trash remake with awesome production design from Jan DeBant in 1999. Looks like new plot, same location. I would suppose some of the plotting has to do with just how the place gets under one’s skin, affecting the mental state. A house full of Eleanors? As the house may not be haunted at all, just bad energy in it’s walls, it can be quite the story.
I’m interested in seeing how it comes together. Speaking of the production design of the trash fire version, oh boy does this look pretty as hell; from the glimpses of Hill House, it seems to be the Hill House I picture from the book. The trailer features some familiar locations – the statue room, the spiral staircase, and others.
We’ll check back in after it airs with discussion and review of the final product.
What do you all think?
