The Haunting Of Bly Manor

[Mister Six]

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

The fake Scot was in Hilll House too.

Also I've just remembered something that really annoyed me - the lady in the lake's MO is to choke people to death, something that usually takes a few minutes, so the American being dragged through the house without dying made sense. Yet both the uncle and Scot died instantaneously. Felt like very lazy writing.

[Dog Botherer]

i think maybe they were suggesting that Tall Bastard Scotsman couldn't maintain his dodgy accent for takes of that length.

wait so Blondie didn't even get offed? what a cop out.

[Noodle Lizard]

Unfortunately (and perhaps unsurprisingly) I think this is utter pants.

First, it's incredibly frustrating that it claims to be its own adaptation of The Turn Of The Screw (of which it isn't even the first to come out from America this fucking year), but spends a lot of its time taking from The Innocents instead, down to stealing some shots wholesale and incongruously passing off O Willow Waly as its own. I'm a big fan of The Innocents, so anything this show does to draw attention to it is only going to make for unflattering comparisons.

Secondly, it's not fucking scary. Not in the slightest. Quite often, it seems like the writers have forgotten it's supposed to be a ghost story entirely, so will punctuate one of its countless soap opera scenes with a ghost walking in the background or turning up in a mirror. This would be more forgivable if it weren't an adaptation of a horror story marketed as being a horror story, and also if the aforementioned soap opera plots were at all fucking interesting. As it stands, they have the depth of something like The OC, if occasionally someone in The OC were also a ghost.

Thirdly, the acting is atrocious, jaw-droppingly so at times. The kid from ET trying to do Matt Berry is hilarious, and the actress playing the protagonist is appallingly inconsistent. It was hard to believe I was watching a professional big-budget production at times. Again, it'd be more forgivable if the characters were at all intriguing - especially when so much of the show is dedicated to their "backstory"/"character development TM" - but they really aren't. By the time we were actually spending time with Quint and Jessel I knew we were fucked - once silent, vaguely menacing specters of the past, staining proceedings with their "sin" and its consequences, expanded/reduced to a boring supernatural Hollyoaks subplot.

The kids, likewise, what a waste. The suggestion that they may be under the influence of their previous mentors (supernaturally or otherwise) was infinitely more impactful and unsettling than seeing said mentors literally climb into their heads whenever it suited. I understand a contemporary show not wanting to imply that a 10-year-old boy is acting sexually mature or improper towards an adult woman (something they got around somewhat in the also-crap The Turning by casting a late-adolescent), but to remove that element almost entirely in service of some boring doomed romance getaway scheme is to remove much of the story's essence. It doesn't help that what they replaced it with is also just incredibly stupid.

That brings me onto my next point - it tries so hard to crowbar in (often anachronistic) "issues" (said in Ollie Plimsolls voice) and drama, but completely ignores the issues and dramas present in the source material and most of its adaptations. The Innocents, for instance, manages to say so much about sexual repression, patriarchy and systematic/inherited oppression in the space of 100 minutes and without explicitly telling you anything, whereas this one spends a large amount of its eight-hour run unambiguously telling you exactly what to think. There's not an ounce of ambiguity in there about anything, and a lot of the "issues" seem to be there just for the sake of being a 2020 Netflix show with no real bearing on anything else in the story or its themes.

More than anything else, though, it's just incredibly fucking boring. There comes a point in a lot of modern horror where you just accept that kind of anything can happen and none of it really matters, and this reached that point within the first half of its run and just trod water from there. Once you're just watching ghosts pacing around an attic explaining their plans to everyone, there's not much you can do to recapture any mystery or ambiguity. Presumably that's why most of the best ghost story writers didn't put stuff like that in it.

That being said, I enjoyed the idea that this old-fashioned stately manorship had hired a young hot lesbian gardener (who was probably the best actress in it, to be fair, despite the horrible material she had to work with), and I found the local countryside policeman who spoke as if he were a Lord very entertaining in his brief appearances. The rest of it, sadly, is toilet.

[Ham Bap]

People having a go at the kids acting.
I thought they were fine, in fact I thought they were perfectly splendid.

[kidsick5000]

I really enjoyed it.
The kids were really good, especially the boy.
Not as overall scary as Hill House but I preferred that it wasn't just another haunted mansion.
Quite satisfying.

[Custard]

I reckon the little girl will be the new Millie Bobbie Brown. A perfectly splendid career, filled with Drake and Botox

The boy will be adverts, before becoming an estate agent at 37

[Mister Six]

I liked the show but the little girl was fucking shit and the boy wasn't much better.

[Glebe]

So I've watched Hill House and three episodes of Bly Manor. Hill House was very good, nice mix of spookiness and family drama with some great performances and a couple of good jump scares, it kinda stuffed a bit too much stuff into the last episode though and maybe could have done with another episode to spread out all the emotional closure stuff.

Very much enjoying Bly Manor so far.

[FAKE EDIT]Oh yeah Matthew Holness as the late father, yay!

[El Unicornio, mang]

Just got done with episode 5 of this and really liking it. 80s setting, posh old manor house, just a couple of things that sweeten the deal for me. I'm finding the child actors slightly annoying at times but I find children slightly annoying anyway. Definitely keeping me guessing and creeping me out a lot at times. The bit where

Spoiler alert

the lady of the lake grabbed Quint got me.

[close]

[QDRPHNC]

Been watching this over the last few weeks, just finished the last episode.

I enjoyed the Haunting of Hill House in spite of its issues, and I think that Bly had all the same negatives without it's atmosphere or charm. I mean, it was ok. I don't feel like I wasted my time. But I think a good horror is a bit like a good mystery, at some point it should all fall into place (unless you're Lynch or Kubrick)... and from episode 5 or 6, it all started to feel a bit arbitrary. By the time the last episode rolled around, it could have gone in any number of directions, I don't really understand the choices they made. Don't understand why

Spoiler alert

the two deads wanted to take over the two kids

[close]

.

Spoiler alert

And then why one of them suddenly didn't.

[close]

Spoiler alert

And then the plastic-faced woman decided to go into the au pair but, why? What did she have to gain from doing so?

[close]

This is one of the occasions where I can't decide if I'm too thick to get it, or not thick enough. It had some interesting ideas, but didn't explore them in satisfying ways. Felt very safe.

Also, the set design bothered me. Whether it was 80s England or 90s America, everything was just mid-century modern.

[Mister Six]

Don't understand why

Spoiler alert

the two deads wanted to take over the two kids

[close]

.

Because it was the only way to leave the Manor. If they didn't, they would gradually forget who they were and become faceless.

Spoiler alert

And then why one of them suddenly didn't.

[close]

Because she realised it was a monstrous thing to do.

Spoiler alert

And then the plastic-faced woman decided to go into the au pair but, why? What did she have to gain from doing so?

[close]

Actually being accepted by someone after spending the past few hundred years reaching out for a human connection and spending the latter part of her life in effective isolation.

Also, the set design bothered me. Whether it was 80s England or 90s America, everything was just mid-century modern.

Yeah I wondered why all the cars in London seemed to be from the 1960s. Not a Ford Cortina or Lada in sight.

[QDRPHNC]

Cheers for the explanation. Although I suppose I didn't grasp that the lake lady was looking for a way out her predicament. Maybe I left it too long between episodes.

[Mister Six]

Well that one is a bit vague, I'll grant you, and my interpretation of what was going on, really.  The other two are fairly explicit though.

[Icehaven]

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]

.

Yeah that whole storyline was

Spoiler alert

left completely unresolved. They devoted most of an episode to explaining who he was and how he died, made it all about her admitting her sexuality then you don't even get to see how or why he stops appearing. Are we supposed to just assume her facing up to him was her facing up to her guilt over his death and also by finally acting on her feelings and going for it with the gardener it made him disappear? Because I'd have thought that would have had the opposite effect on his restless spirit. Or was he supposed to not be a ghost but a hallucination she was having, because otherwise why was he there when all the other ghosts were people who'd died at the house? They really should have given that bit a proper end.

[close]

[Mister Six]

Spoiler alert

Even by the logic of the story, the "gravity well" of the lady in the lake should have trapped him there, if he was actually a ghost. But if he wasn't, then he's a symptom of a severe mental iasue that's not going to be resolved with a campfire chat.

[close]

[Glebe]

Finished this the other night, thought it was pretty good overall, though as with Hill House it meandered a bit and I found it a mite confusing at times.

New Rockstar's did a video of all the ghosts they spotted.... crikey there's loads, only spotted a few of them!

Btw, did the dead boyfriend remind anyone else of Elijah Wood in Sin City?

[QDRPHNC]

Yes!

Spoiler alert

I took him to be a manifestation of her guilt. Did we ever actually see him as ghost or was he only in mirrors?

[close]

[Glebe]

Yes!

Spoiler alert

I took him to be a manifestation of her guilt. Did we ever actually see him as ghost or was he only in mirrors?

[close]

Spoiler alert

He appears when she throws his glasses into the bonfire.

[close]

[Custard]

I'm thinking he wasn't a literal ghost, more like what happened to him and how was what was haunting her. So when she finally let go of her guilt (and him) and put his glasses in the fire, he was no longer haunting her

It's not great, but it makes some sort of sense

[Dog Botherer]

both seasons of the show have made an effort to blur the lines between mental illness and ghost shit. i assumed that the glasses cunt was a manifestation of trauma and once confronted, fucked off.

[Mister Six]

It's sloppy writing however you cut it, I think.

[Icehaven]

Yeah I'm always torn with deliberate ambiguity, on the one hand it's good to not be spoonfed but it's a handy excuse for lazy writing and indecisiveness too.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

Spoiler alert

Both Dani's fiancé and the uncle's double appears to be figments of their imagination, not literal ghosts as they're not covered by the logics of Bly Manor and the lady in the lake. It's also interesting that Uncle Henry's episode follows the one about Hannah, and is followed by one about Peter and Rebecca, as they all follow the same structure of non-linear narration, returning over and over to a defining moment, which, even when not traumatic, is at the root of their own issues (Hannah's unable to express her feelings towards Owen, Peter can't escape the patterns of manipulation and deception he endured as a child, Rebecca gets the fur coat and some feeling of importance from Peter who will deceive her over and over, etc.)

[close]

In both series, Flanagan deliberately blurs the lines between possession and mental health issues, as most ghost or possession stories are often interpreted as a metaphor for mental illness. It's obvious in most Stephen King's works. The Shining is about alcohol, Christine and Misery are about cocaine, etc. But you can read for instance the Robert Wise version of The Haunting as the story of a young woman who is in denial over her own "unnatural" sexuality.

Spoiler alert

So, it's rather coherent with these views to have Dani suffering from grief and guilt over the fiancé's death, increased by the repression of her own sexuality, in the first part of Bly Manor then to have her repeating the same self-destructive pattern later in life, during the epilogue, when the lady in the lake slowly taking possession of her. But it could also be read as the first signs of melancholic depression, schizophrenia or dementia.

[close]

[Mister Six]

I think it weakens the whole thing, to be honest. Ghostly visions of the characters' repressed guilt/anxiety/conscience/whatever has become progressively more hacky and tired since it was popularised in Six Feet Under 20 years back, but mixing them in with actual ghosts (which are also symbolic of dementia/abuse/not letting go/whatever else) just makes for an overstuffed and confused narrative. Glasses bloke was clearly just there to add some jump scares in early on so people didn't get bored, and that's shite. Alky ghost episode should have been trimmed down to half an episode max, too. Felt very much like padding, especially as that character existed just to pass on a message about ghosts at the very end.

[TrenterPercenter]

just getting round to watching and can confirm shit.

Cheers thanks.