As much as Mike Flanagan has become synonymous with horror, his television shows also play heavily with themes commonly found in classic gothic literature. For some, horror and the gothic are interchangeable, but Flanagan carefully weaves the latter into everything from The Haunting of Hill House to The Midnight Club.
Grim settings, haunted places, dreams and nightmares, an emotional and mental burden, a cloak of mystery and a dark and stormy night turn a typical horror story into a gothic one. Gothic horror, a branch of Romanticism, emerged in the 1760s, but Edgar Allan Poe later became a figurehead of Gothic fiction in America. It makes sense that Flanagan, who has breathed new life into the works of Shirley Jackson and Henry James, would take on one of the genre's modern forefathers for his next adaptation.
Creator: Mike Flanagan
Stars: Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Mary McDonnell
Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher may not seem, on the surface, to embody what we imagine the Gothic to be. It's about a pharmaceutical magnate and his family, which consists of everything from a gambler to a cake decorator, but that's just the veneer of this story.
Beneath the glossy surface that reminds us more of the Roys of Succession than the House of Usher, it's clear that Flanagan has fully embraced what Poe has to offer. By combining the modern era with the romantic, Flanagan is able to put his own unique stamp on some much-loved stories.
The concept of The Fall of the House of Usher is simple, but although the series shares the same name as the short story, don't expect it to follow it to the letter. Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) is the CEO of a powerful pharmaceutical company that has been hit by one scandal after another. Although he became wealthy thanks to an opioid crisis, the morally bankrupt Roderick has recently experienced a more personal tragedy: all six of his children have died, one after another, in rapid succession, and almost all in gruesome ways.
Then, on a dark and stormy night, Roderick calls C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), the investigator who has been trying to hold him accountable for his company's crimes, and asks to meet for a talk. We learn, through these conversations, how each of his children dies and we discover the truth behind the mystery of the House of Usher.
References to Poe's writings are included in every aspect of the series. The pharmaceutical company is called Fortunato, there are nods to The Mask of the Red Death and “Annabel Lee”, as well as constant images of crows; There's even a character named Lenore (Kyleigh Curran). But the story itself seems coherent, despite incorporating elements from all of Poe's works. For those who are Poe fans, there are plenty of references and callbacks to point out: the series is a treasure trove of the writer's stories. For more casual viewers, there's never the sense that the show is winking at the audience as if to point out references you might not understand at first glance.
The beating heart of the story is the dysfunctional Usher family. The eldest children, Frederick (Henry Thomas) and Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan), are children of Roderick's ex-wife, the aforementioned Annabel Lee (Katie Parker), while the four youngest children, Victorine LaFourcade (T'Nia Miller) , Napoleon Usher (Rahul Kohli), Camille L'Espanaye (Kate Siegel) and Prospero Usher (Sauriyan Sapkota) are illegitimate.
They all exist in varying degrees of pampering, some finding their father closer to adulthood, while others were brought into the family when they were much younger. There is a healthy animosity between the children, aggravated by the involvement of money. They are competitive and sarcastic with each other, and when they start dying, you can hardly tell that some of them are grieving. The series makes it clear that although Roderick has recognized all of his children in some way, there is no warmth or love in the house.
At Roderick's side is his twin sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell), an even more cunning and cunning character who apparently has a strong grip on the reins of both his emotions and the company. There's also Juno (Ruth Codd), Roderick's young wife, whose relationship with Roderick is problematic, and not because of their huge age difference.
Finally, the man in Roderick and Madeline's shadows is the menacing and entrepreneurial Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill), someone who is not only a lawyer but something of a jack-of-all-trades for the family; he knows about the skeletons in the closet and where the bodies are buried.
Although there is a central story that ties the others together, each episode delves into the specific deaths of Roderick's children, giving us glimpses into their lives and showing us how they died.
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