The Haunting Of Bly Manor

[Custard]

Anyone seen this yet? New nine part old fashioned ghost story by Mike Flanagan, lobbed straight up on Netflix, in time for Halloween.

It features some of the cast from 2018's The Haunting Of Hill House, but is a new story that isn't connected to that series

5 episodes in, and I'm really enjoying it. They seem to have eased off on the previous series' jump scares, and I'm finding it a genuinely entertaining ghost story, with a horrible feeling of dread and unease throughout

The cast are again excellent, and the two kids are suitably creepy without being laughable. The little girl continuously saying everything is "perfectly splendid" tickles me more than it probably should, and I'm deffo using that to describe anything good from now on. Apparently she's the current voice of Peppa Pig too, which is definitely perfectly splendid

Anyway, this is good I reckon

[thugler]

I'm enjoying it, but it seems a tad naffer than the first series which i loved. Some of the actors/accents (bizarrely having Americans play british people alongside actual british people at times) are dodgy as hell. Some of the dialogue too (scene in episode 3 with the policeman made me laugh). But it's good fun really. Am 4 episodes in.

[Custard]

Heh, yeah the accents can be a bit off. It feels like Flanagan was trying to crowbar in his favourite actors from the first series where he can, so instead of hiring an actual English bloke as the uncle they got back the dad from the last one

Hope you enjoy the fifth episode. We found it the strongest so far, as it focuses on one character and is really well written and acted

Think we're gonna binge the rest today, what with it being a floppy dozy sunday

[Obel]

Finished it today. I think it started really badly, I found the accents and general weird un-Englishness of it really off putting. Turns out it was shot entirely in Vancouver. After episode 4 I started to get invested with 5 being the high point of the series. The last couple of episodes I lost interest and thought it fizzled out a bit. Was hilarious to see that Greg Sestero cameo though, me and my sister immediately said "Oh hi, Mark!"

[Dog Botherer]

2 episodes in and it's a bit crap so far. will stick with it though, sounds like it gets better.

[Mister Six]

Watched the first two last night and it's a bit wank. The kids are fucking shit actors and everyone else is really stilted (especially the Americans trying really hard to sound natural with their English accents) - with the exception of the Asian bloke with the moustache (Owen?), who seems like the only actual human being in the story, and the priest played by the guy from Best in Show.

The scares have all been pretty tired so far - ooh spooky dolls! A little girl who acts a bit scary! Creepy reflections! - but maybe that's just because The Turn of the Screw has been done so many times before. Can't remember how much of this is in the original book as I've not read it for decades.

The thing that really annoys me, though, is that it keeps doing that lazy TV drama thing Lost did, where someone will say something cryptic or worrying, and the person they're talking to won't ask any follow-up questions, just staring blankly as the camera drifts away or the music rises to a crescendo before a hard cut, because they're just a prop to facilitate contrived drama for the audience rather than a real (albeit fictional) person you can invest in emotionally. Cheap, tacky writing and it takes me out of the story every time.

Heh, yeah the accents can be a bit off. It feels like Flanagan was trying to crowbar in his favourite actors from the first series where he can, so instead of hiring an actual English bloke as the uncle they got back the dad from the last one

It's a different bloke. The dad from the last one was Timothy Hutton, who was the youngest actor to receive an Oscar for best supporting actor and is now defending a rape allegation. The uncle in this one is Henry Thomas, aka Elliot from ET. My wife thought they were the same actor too, though they don't really look very similar.

[Obel]

Henry Thomas is the dad in the past scenes in Hill House. Same bloke.

[Custard]

Yep, same bloke

Just finished this. Was pretty good, though it didn't quite match the quality of Hill House. Starts getting really weird and twisty towards the end, but I think the last episode and ending was quite effective and well done

Not sure if it needed 9 episodes, but it was nice it unwound at a leisurely pace

Well worth the watch if you like slow burning atmospheric horror with a decent bit of emotion lobbed in. Surprisingly light on jump scares, which was also welcome

[Mister Six]

Ah right you are, sorry.

[mjwilson]

These kids are tough going.

[BlodwynPig]

Saw the snippet they play when you open Netflix. Looked very template-like, very Netflix shading. Big grand house, new arrival, 'gorgeous' costume design. Didn't make me want to dive in. Saying that I can't find anything on Netflix and have resorted to watching Dirty John: Betty, which at least has the wonderful Amanda Peet in it.

[Povidone]

Nice to see Greg Sestero and Matthew Holness getting work.

Agreed episode 5 is really good. Only about halfway through at the moment but as soon as the

Spoiler alert

cracks in the wall started to appear again

[close]

you can see where it's most likely going to end up...not in a bad way though, they've laid so much groundwork with the characters it inspires a sense of dread rather than a yawn of derision.

[oy vey]

Seeing a ghost in the mirror and turning around to see nothing is a fucking tired cliche but otherwise sticking with it. Mrs. Oy is enjoying it. Seems like one for the ladies as well. No harm...

[Dog Botherer]

Ep 3 was frustratingly slow but 4 picked up nicely, got some decent back story to sink my teeth into.

yer mans Scottish accent is absolutely dire though. looked it up and he's English. why not just have him do his normal accent? haven't seen any plot reason for him to sound like shit Gerard Butler.

[holyzombiejesus]

Genuine question, is this a children's programme? I've only seen the picture of it on the Netflix menu but presumed it was for kids.

[QDRPHNC]

2 episodes in and enjoying it. Is that Garth Merenghi popping up in those old family photos?

[Custard]

Heh, yep it's him. I did a double take too!

This is for adults, it just has a couple of kids in it. Admittedly the title sounds a bit CBBC too!

[Small Potatoes]

You'd have thought Matthew Holness would have pointed out to the director that it's very unlikely that a posh middle-aged English bloke in 1987 would say he'd "done the math". I found it really jarring, almost more so than the shite English accents elsewhere.

[BlodwynPig]

Genuine question, is this a children's programme? I've only seen the picture of it on the Netflix menu but presumed it was for kids.

State of what passes as drama these days, friend. State of it.

[Custard]

Surely "done the math" has been around a while?

Or since 2005, according to Urban Dictionary

Maybe Garth's character is actually from the future? Ahhh

[frajer]

Watched the first three on a lazy Sunday and it's pretty bad.

It's already facing the same problems as Hill House in that you can't sustain horror/suspense over a single 10-episode narrative without getting seriously nightmarish. Keeping things sinister and mysterious and freaky enough that you can't guess what's coming next. I thought Channel Zero pulled this off well, especially the Candle Cove run.

This is tame and beige stuff, even by Netflix standards. Also dodgy accents aside, all of the characters are so thinly-drawn and irritating that I'm rooting for the ghost.

[Dog Botherer]

eps 5 & 6 are a significant jump in quality. shame that the show takes half of its run to hit its stride.

MoustacheCook, Baldy, Blondie, and Garth Meringhi are very good. Tall Bastard Scotsman is absolute shit though. can't take a word he says seriously. the naff nephew is creepier.

[Custard]

Took me a while to work out who you meant by Baldy. She was called Skunk Anansie in my house

[Dog Botherer]

SHES A BALDY AHAHAHAHA

[Glebe]

I've not watched this, nor The Haunting of Hill House - is that worth a shot?

Watched director Mike Flanagan's Hush the other night, a pleasant (if that's an appropriate word for it) surprize. Gerald's Game was okay, not seen Doctor Sleep as yet.

Mike Flanagan looks like Al Murray.

[Dog Botherer]

we gave up on this. 7 was a bag of shit, bored off our tits. 10 minutes into episode 8 it was off. show seemed determined to focus on all the wrong characters. fuck off with your doomed love story cliche BOLLOCKS.

I've not watched this, nor The Haunting of Hill House - is that worth a shot?

Watched director Mike Flanagan's Hush the other night, a pleasant (if that's an appropriate word for it) surprize. Gerald's Game was okay, not seen Doctor Sleep as yet.

Mike Flanagan looks like Al Murray.

my feelings about this season are above. Hill House is genuinely decent though. it's not groundbreaking stuff but it's very solid. good jump scares too, according to the wife.

[Mister Six]

OK, so the first couple of episodes were naff, but I found myself warming up to the show through episodes 3-5 or so. The kids got less annoying, the fake English accents less obvious, the characters pleasantly rounded out. It never managed to be scary as such at any point, but I was invested in the drama, and while I'd called the reveal of episode 5 earlier, I cared enough about the character to still feel awful for them when it happened.

Sadly, it's gone and done the Netflix thing of being two or three episodes too long. The extended black and white backstory for the lady in the lake was boring as fuck (either do the whole thing with narration in half the time, or let it play out as an actual drama without the narration) and we definitely didn't need a whole episode devoted to

Spoiler alert

the uncle's alcoholism and his spooky self-ghost, which was never really justified or explained

[close]

. Not seeing how

Spoiler alert

American bird confronted and got rid of glasses ghost was a cheat too, and made his existence as an easy way to get some lazy jump-scares in early all the more obvious

[close]

.[nb]Also it's a bit fucking shit that he kept appearing in reflections while standing behind American bird in the first half of the show, but a certain dead character couldn't do the same in the epilogue at the end.[/nb]

It won me back at the end, though - I found all of the stuff about love and loss and living with terminal illness/dementia very affecting (Mrs Six was in floods of tears, but I was all stoic like a proper repressed Brit), and I liked that everyone was aware of all the spooky shit at the close. Quite tired of one character being alone against freaky odds (even though I know ambiguity about what was going on was part of the original novel).

So yeah, a decent show on the whole, but overlong and sagging in the middle. Dramatically satisfying but not actually scary. Kind of the inverse of Hill House, which started strong but just kind of fizzled out at the end, and was full of great spooky moments but lacked a solid dramatic core. Rahul Kohli deffo the MVP, and I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for his other work.

If he does another one I'd like to see him shifting away from big old spooky houses to something urban. A haunted council estate or something.

I've not watched this, nor The Haunting of Hill House - is that worth a shot?

Watched director Mike Flanagan's Hush the other night, a pleasant (if that's an appropriate word for it) surprize. Gerald's Game was okay, not seen Doctor Sleep as yet.

Mike Flanagan looks like Al Murray.

Like I said just above, Hill House is kind of the opposite of Bly Manor in that it favours scares over drama, and starts strong but sputters out rather than starting weak and ending strong. I liked Hush too. Haven't seen Gerald's Game (although I probably will now I know its pedigree) but Doctor Sleep is great - I watched it a couple of weeks back, and like Bly Manor it does a great job of not scrimping on characters, drama or themes. Probably more dark fantasy than horror - no real scares in it, I think - but deffo worth watching. It manages to be respectful to both the book and Kubrick's Shining, too, which is impressive.

[Glebe]

Fans Dog Botherer and Mr. 6, will prolly give it a look!

[Custard]

Hill House is pretty great, and has a brilliant episode late on where it's (seemingly) performed "live" and all shot in one take.

And unlike EastEnders, no one calls Ian Beale by his real name

I'm surprised they didn't have an episode like that in this series. Maybe they thought the kids, or more likely the fake Scot, weren't up to it

I did greatly enjoy this series too, though. And it possibly has greater emotional gut punches, come the end

[Bently Sheds]

I fell asleep during episodes 2 and 3 yet followed the story and still felt it was overlong. It picked up towards the end.

I read an interview with Amelia Eve in which she revealed that she recorded herself doing the narration for the series and then sent the recordings to Carla Gugino to enable her to replicate her accent as best she could for her part.