On the House

Hill House:  the Haunting of, is that to which I refer.

I'm up to episode 6, with another four episodes to go, but I feel the urge to comment on it before the end.

I think it's quite good, but flawed in interesting ways.   The best part is the acting of the younger version of the family - all of the children are very good, with the young, poor-sighted (if his thick glasses are anything to go by) Luke being a particularly charming and likeable presence.   (Even older Luke as junkie still has a basically sympathetic face.)   It is nice to see Henry Thomas, famous as Elliott in ET, is still making a living too.  The mother is fine, with only the domestic help feeling a bit cliched sometimes.

Another think I have liked quite a lot is the imaginative detail in some of the spook action in the house.  The levitating bowler hat man sequence was a particularly good example in (I think) episode 5.  Last night's episode 6 also had some nice surprises in the present day, too.  (It was a very well made episode, with lots done in long, unbroken takes.)   I give credit to it for not being too gruesome in most of its scares, and often the tension is nicely built before a spectre makes an appearance.  There's not an over-reliance on the cheap jump-scare, although they do occur. 

On the downside, as I commented here before, there is a bit of suspension of disbelief necessary, not uncommon in haunted house movies, as to why the family persists in living there for so long after so many weird things have happened.  Also - turn on the light!  Normal people scared in the middle of the night turn on the light.   [This, it has occurred to me, is probably why I find Poltergeist so enjoyable - it's a brightly lit haunted house movie, and scarier for it, because it is more realistic in that aspect.    There is also a reason for the family to stay there  that doesn't apply to your average haunted house.  All praise to Spielberg, who wrote the witty, clever and scary screenplay.]

Back to the House:  the main problem I have is that I really don't think the writing of the adult children's unresolved conflict ever comes across as completely convincing.   They strike me as unreasonably upset with Steven, the eldest, for writing a book about the haunting when he apparently does not really believe that it was supernatural at heart.   I mean, he offered to share the money.  And besides, as we learn in episode 6, he did see at least one thing in the house which really only had a supernatural explanation, so why did he start later thinking it was all mental issues?   I don't really get it.   If the series wants us to understand why he annoyed his siblings so much, I think more specific detail needed to be given.  Maybe more in coming in the last few episodes. 

The two elder sisters conflict seemed a bit over the top last night too -  aren't they a bit too upper-middle class for the swear-y shouting on display?  And what was going on in the storeroom?  Is lesbian hook-up sister (a character who, in adult version, I find hard to like) actually cheating with a husband for whom I feel sympathy for having married into such a nutty family?   The whole lesbian bit with her seems just gratuitous to me, too.   I like the way she is psychic with touch and wears gloves all the time presumably for that reason - but the picking up the girl at the bar seemed just a bit of unnecessary filler.

There are another four episodes to go, so perhaps I will start feeling better about the writing of the dialogue between the adult family.   But I don't think I can be the only one who wishes that some episodes spent more time in the past than in the present, not only because that is where most of the chills are, but because the adult family writing is not as good as it should be.