Netflix’s 81% RT Horror Masterpiece Is An Underrated Adaptatio

Though Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher solely earned a Rotten Tomatoes viewers ranking of 81%, the miniseries stays a basic adaptation and the author/director’s most underrated present thus far. Mike Flanagan’s many horror TV shows show he’s the undisputed king of small-screen terror. Nevertheless, his crucial acclaim belies a surprisingly difficult profession.

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Flanagan’s two most up-to-date films, 2025’s Stephen King adaptation The Life of Chuck and 2019’s The Shining sequel Physician Sleep, each underperformed on the field workplace upon their launch. Equally, though his Netflix reveals have been largely beloved, 2022’s The Midnight Club was canceled earlier than its second season.

Flanagan had a whole second outing deliberate for the YA horror collection, which blended character drama, fantasy, horror, and moments of levity to create a completely distinctive tone of its personal. When The Midnight Membership season 2’s plans have been scuppered, he went on to create his most divisive present thus far, which additionally turned his last challenge for Netflix.

Netflix’s The Fall of the Home of Usher Utterly Reinvents Edgar Allen Poe

Rahul Kohli as Napoleon "Leo" Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher — Rahul Kohli as Napoleon “Leo” Usher screaming in a scene from The Fall of the Home of Usher

Although this collection obtained combined responses from viewers, incomes solely 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, it has gone on to be seen as Flanagan’s most underrated TV collection ever. 2023’s The Fall of the House of Usher is a tonally complicated masterpiece that sees Flanagan stability political satire, broad gory horror comedy, and real scares.

As if this weren’t spectacular sufficient, The Fall of the Home of Usher additionally loosely adapts numerous Edgar Allan Poe brief tales in every of its episodes. Whereas all the miniseries is loosely primarily based on a mix of Poe’s “The Fall of the Home of Usher” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” particular person episodes adapt different Poe tales.

“The Masque of the Pink Demise,” “The Murders within the Rue Morgue,”, “The Black Cat,” “The Inform-Story Coronary heart,” “The Gold-Bug,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” present the plots for every particular person episode. The miniseries as a complete follows a corrupt pharmaceutical firm’s ailing CEO as he displays on his misdeeds and loses his youngsters.

As horrible, absurdly violent fates befall every of his youngsters, Bruce Greenwood’s Roderick Usher remembers the horrible deal he made a few years earlier that led to all this horror. The Fall of the House of Usher’s ending is surprisingly shifting and tragic, however the remainder of the miniseries is brutally humorous.

Why The Fall of the Home of Usher’s Viewers Reception Was So Blended

Mary Mcdonnell as Madeline in Fall of the House of Usher

With its broadly comedic tone and colourful, giallo-esque visible model, The Fall of the Home of Usher was a significant departure for Flanagan. His breakthrough small-screen success, The Haunting of Hill Home, was a way more self-serious, poignant household drama about intergenerational trauma, remorse, and household.

Its follow-up, the extra divisive The Haunting of Bly Manor, was largely an 80s-set interval piece that retold The Flip of the Screw as a tragic melodrama. Sadder and fewer scary than its predecessor, The Haunting of Bly Manor was additionally slower and extra elegiac in tone.

Though 2021’s Midnight Mass introduced again the scares of The Haunting of Hill Home, the present was additionally Flanagan’s slowest and saddest collection thus far. The small-town horror collection mirrored on dying, religion, and neighborhood, and was arguably extra heartbreaking than scary regardless of some actually unsettling moments.

Though The Midnight Membership had some moments of enjoyable, the present targeted on a bunch of terminally sick youngsters and couldn’t keep away from the tonal heaviness that got here with this theme. As such, The Fall of the Home of Usher represented an enormous tonal swerve for Flanagan, and the present inevitably struggled to clear the extremely excessive bar set by The Haunting of Hill Home‘s success.

Add in a sluggish begin to the season, which picks up rapidly after episode 1, and it’s straightforward to see why the Poe adaptation wasn’t an on the spot hit. Nevertheless, viewers who love horror, comedy, and Flanagan’s work extra broadly want to hunt out this underrated masterpiece instantly, because it stays his angriest and most polemical piece of writing but.

The Fall of the Home of Usher Is Not like Any Different Mike Flanagan Horror Present

Haunting-of-Hill-House-Fall-of-the-house-of-usher

The Fall of the Home of Usher is far more cynical and darkish than his earlier reveals, and far much less heartfelt and shifting. This may sound like a nasty factor, however The Fall of the House of Usher’s colourful Giallo style and comedic tone guarantee it’s nice information.

Like Succession, the Knives Out films, and Triangle of Unhappiness, The Fall of the Home of Usher has an undisguised disdain for its wealthy, privileged characters. This makes it straightforward to giggle at their brutal fates, significantly after they typically invite their very own horrible deaths by horrible acts of wanton cruelty.

After 4 reveals that went out of their strategy to humanize even essentially the most odious characters, it’s super enjoyable to see Flanagan invent a slew of unlikable characters and kill them off in karmically satisfying, inventively grotesque methods. The author/director maintains the identical ear for dialogue that he’s at all times had, however right here, it’s used for humor moderately than pathos.

Thus, The Fall of the Home of Usher presents viewers a take a look at a brand new aspect of Flanagan’s horror repertoire. The result’s a gory, grotesque, enjoyable, and surprisingly sharp collection that’s required viewing for horror followers, whether or not they’re accustomed to The Fall of the Home of Usher’s supply materials or not.