Hello horror fans - and welcome back to the scariest channel on YouTube - Top 5 Scary
Videos - and today, I want to talk about something that is very important to this weird and wonderful
world that we call horror.
As we creep up to all Hallow’s Eve - we’ve been recently blessed by a true gem of horror
cinema - one of those few things that comes along every blue moon, peeping its paranormal
head out of nowhere - and delivering on its most important promise.
To scare us senseless.
What’s going on guys - as always, I’ll be your host Jack Finch - as I attempt to
lay out the Top 5 Scary Reasons Why The Haunting Of Hill House is Horror Perfection.
Roll the clip.
Oh Luke, you poor, poor kid.
The stuff you’ve seen.
I’m just going to go out and say it, and I don’t usually like to overhype or get
caught up in the buzz of things - but The Haunting of Hill House will be looked back
upon in decades to come, as the moment that the genre shifted into its next terrifying
form.
Just like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre thumped its way into the heart of 70s slasher cinema,
and Night of the Living Dead paved the way for an entire half-century of horror reanimation
- Hill House will take its place amongst the same halls of horror greatness.
It’s not the first to try the episodic TV form - nor will it be the last, but it’s
definitely our greatest attempt yet - and here’s why.
Before we jump into that though guys - you know how it is - if you’re a fan of this
video, The Haunting of Hill House or just Top 5 Scary in general, then hit that thumbs
up button as well as that subscribe bell so you can stay up to date with our most terrifying
uploads.
Small disclaimer here - but if you haven’t yet seen The Haunting of Hill House, then
this video will feature some pretty major spoilers - so please, don’t let me ruin
it for you, and save this video for when you’re fully caught up.
Kicking off at Number 5 - The Eyes of a Child
And while it might seem like a pretty obvious sentiment, even after just the first episode
- Stephen Sees a Ghost - we’re drawn into the world of the Then and the Now, with tiny
fragmentary timeslips throughout.
A flashback within a flashback, a memory of childhood conjured up from the most mundane
of things.
The fact that we see this story through both the eyes of a child, and later the eyes of
an adult, is a very important device employed throughout the show, that is relatively easy
to overlook.
The beauty being, neither would work unless they had each other.
Hey, I guess there’s a lesson to be learnt there.
Stephen King knew it in It, yet the vast majority of horror cinema only half-heartedly commits
with such an important structural device.
We understand Luke’s addiction as an adult, because we understand the trauma in his formative
years.
The same goes for Nell - which in hindsight is evident, they’re the youngest of the
Crain family - thus so susceptive to the things that go bump in the night.
Which is why this wouldn’t really work in an average feature film, we needed the time
to lay these seeds, to start from childhood - and move through to adulthood, so the events
that transpire actually have meaning - rather than just a cheap thrill and a few jump scares.
We needed the room to breathe.
As an audience, we don’t really care when Lorraine Warren gets screamed at by a demonic
nun - but we do in Hill House, because of the consequences - and that’s an incredibly
impressive sentiment to pull off.
Which leads us to our Number 4 reason why - Thank You, Netflix
Because this show couldn’t have really been pulled off by any other production company.
It was a risk, and everyone knew it.
The one thing that they had - a chip to bargain with the Devil, so to speak - was the pedigree
that came with director Mike Flanagan.
Now, don’t get me wrong - I’m not going to hold up Flanagan as some pariah of horror
cinema, because I think commercially, he’s quite far from that.
Oculus, Hush, Gerald's Game and Ouija were all middle-of-the-road horror flicks for me,
albeit incredibly well made - but here, with Hill House - you can just tell that Mike Flanagan
ate up the opportunity more ferociously than a carnivorous demonic house.
And he absolutely nailed it, all he needed was an innovative, free thinking platform
to take a chance on him - and the end result is this - perhaps the greatest Netflix Original
ever made.
The scores are there too - it currently holds a 9.0 on IMDB - the highest of any Netflix
Original, Stranger Things included.
And that’s exciting for the genre and television as a whole.
The results are in, the scorecards are set.
We want - no, scratch that - we need longform horror fiction that delivers on the stories
that we deserve.
We care about Hill House and the Crain family, you just have to take a look at all the Theo
Buzzfeed articles and screencap memes popping up every which where - and the fact that The
Haunting of Hill House has been so successful is because we’ve been waiting for it.
Take note, Netflix.
We want more of this.
And because of that, we also can’t forget our Number 3 reason why - Also, Thank You
Shirley Jackson
And the fact that she gave us such an incredible tale to bare witness, which Mike Flanagan
clung to dearly as source material - and inevitably, did justice to this fictional work.
I’m going to admit, I’d heard of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill
House, but I’d never actually read it.
In fact, the closest that I’ve ever come was Jan de Bont’s 1999 haunted house mish-mash
- The Haunting - which was fun as a kid, but as an adult - yeah, not so much.
If you’ve seen it, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
Props to the original 1963 version though - pretty camp and creepy - but still - it
doesn’t hold a candle to Mike Flanagan’s version.
In regard to the tale of Hill House, Shirley Jackson said - No one can get into a novel
about a haunted house without hitting the subject of reality head-on; either I have
to believe in ghosts, which I do, or I have to write another kind of novel altogether.
Although the plot is constructed in a much different manner, more akin to the film version
- the show takes the bones that Shirley Jackson laid out and turns it into a much more terrifying
beast, while also maintaining the message that Jackson intended.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest haunted-house stories ever written, Jackson intended for
us to draw our own conclusion when faced with the unexplainable - summed up in her short,
final paragraph - where the reader is left uncertain as to the nature of Eleanor’s
suicide.
Was it her own internal demons that drove her to death, or the paranormal?
The ghosts that linger on in Hill House.
If you’ve seen the show - which I hope you have at this point - then this should hopefully
make sense, because our Number 2 point on this list is the reason that makes Hill House
so damn good - Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction.
The one thing that hit me harder than anything, even the Bent Neck Lady - was the fact that
Mike Flanagan did something that is generally difficult to do when telling, in essence,
a ghost story.
He gave every bump and creep and every psychotic breakdown and memory slip - an explainable
alternative.
The show itself is rooted in science, and psychology - the study of death and the skeptic
foil of the paranormal.
Take Stephen, the eldest and most reluctant of the Crain children - an author of the supernatural,
that explicitly makes a point to deny and explain away his own childhood haunting.
In Episode One, his feature episode - we are him, stepping into this world with a general
unease about confronting the existence of ghosts.
Mike Flanagan deliberately shows us as an audience that oftentimes, true horror lurks
in reality.
Stephen’s Denial, Shirley’s Anger, Theo’s Disconnection, Luke’s Addiction and Nell’s
Ruined Innocence.
Episode 3 - Touch - is perhaps the best example of this, with Theodora’s issue in solving
the trauma of a little girl.
We’re constantly being shown a shimmer of truth, but in the end - Mr. Smiley isn’t
a demonic entity or a malevolent spirit - it’s child abuse and the caged trauma that comes
with it.
Oftentimes, we can explain away the truth by coating it in a paranormal tale - and The
Haunting of Hill House is the perfect example of seeing both sides of the story, which to
no one's surprise - are equally as terrifying.
Which brings us to our last, and final point - Number 1 - The Crain Family
Who are the one group of people that horror cinema needed to shift away from the disposable
and notoriously clunky characters often associated with the genre.
Don’t get me wrong, some of fictions greatest characters have come from horror - but as
a whole, the cheapness of life and virility of death are the two parts of an equation
which nearly always results in throwaway characters.
The Jock, The Virgin, The Nerd - The Final Girl - tropes in horror cinema that draw a
sketch of a story as a means to justify the end.
But not with the Crain Family, because I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in feeling a strange
- instant connection to these characters.
I cared that Luke was 90 days sober, 92 actually.
I cared that Theo drowned her sorrows in a bottle.
I even cared that Hugh kept the Red Room secret for all these years, because in essence - this
show was a story about a family confronting their demons.
If you take away the ghosts and the corpses, even the historical trauma - this show is
still equally as good.
It’s foundation is strong, just like the foundation of a house - and the seven members
of the Crain family equally hold up their fair share of the story.
There literally isn’t a weak link in any of them - which is a feat of writing in itself.
So when we finally get to Episode 10 - Silence Lay Steadily - we get something that we never
truly get in horror cinema.
Resolution.
How many horror films or shows have made you tear up?
Not out of fear - but out of real emotional joy.
Yeah, it’s a weird feeling - right?
We’re so used to that hand shooting out of the grave in the final moments of Carrie,
or realising that Michael Myers body has disappeared again - ready to kill another day - that it’s
hard to accept when we’re confronted with an actual ending.
A final page in a ghost story.
Well, maybe things will change.
Unfortunately folks, that’s all we’ve got time for in today’s video - I sincerely
hope you’ve enjoyed this particular list - cheers for sticking around all the way to
the end.
If you’d like to continue on with your horror binge, then feel free to hit the playlist
floating shortly above.
As always, I’ve been your host Jack Finch - you’ve been watching Top 5 Scary Videos
- and until next time, you take it easy.
Oh, and Happy Halloween.