Have you ever attended a funeral?
Not just any funeral, but one where the deceased was someone close?
Someone you wished would never leave.
What did you feel in that moment?
Staring at the coffin...
It feels like time stops.
An overwhelming clarity fills your being and you're submerged in the sobering grief.
Confused, disoriented and abandoned to an unending moment.
Hoping and praying to be woken up from a nightmare.
Nothing much is more horrible than losing someone you love.
The Haunting Of Hill House, specifically the Two Storms episode, perfectly encapsulates
the horror of death, grief and all that comes with it.
The episode is very different from the others in the series.
The show's haunting score is absent for the most part along with the musical cues.
The episode is approximately 55 minutes long and only contains 5 cuts in the first 50 minutes.
The oners the director uses to tell his story aren't gimmicks, they are tools
that manage to elevate the drama in the episode by making us a participant in the family's
wake.
We're not just viewing the action, we are immersed in it, like one of the show's many
ghosts, at the center of it all, watching the story unfold.
We follow the camera's precise choreography and the other characters' reactions, experiencing
the revelations in real time as they do.
The camera's lens guides us through the inside of the various rooms and corridors while being
uninterrupted leading us to believe that we are not observing different sets but an actual
home.
We are grounded in the characters reality.
Combined with the absence of a musical score, it makes the sudden apparitions feel all the
more startling and disturbing.
Having the action contained within one long take also limits the amount of space that
can be explored.
We are confined to the funeral home or Hill House while not being allowed to see a different
scenery or a different viewpoint.
The finite space coupled with the mounting subconscious expectation of an imminent cut
accentuates the sense of tension and claustrophobia.
We are stuck, just like the Crains.
That sensation of being trapped is also felt by the characters.
They are living one of the worst days of their lives and they can't escape it.
They're both stuck in the past (emotionally) and the present (physically).
The reality of Nell's death is all encompassing, it makes time and the outside world meaningless.
The ongoing storm also serves to disconnect them from any external influence, isolating
and forcing them to deal with their grief, and in turn, pushing them to air out their
unresolved issues.
The camera's constantly choreographed motions mirror the characters' states of mind and
feelings.
Always moving, turning in circles, unstable, in flux, prolonged and uncut.
Everyone is grieving and coping in different ways.
Resisting the situation.
Theo is angry and drunk, Shirl maintains her professional composure
but is pushed to indignation, Kevin is nervous and overcompensating by being
extra helpful, Steve is in denial and confrontational,
Luke is confused and scared, not much different from when he was far younger.
Hugh is devastated but reserved.
Being together for the first time in years and under the pressures of an impossible situation,
they are compelled to look at their own lives and realize they've been incapable of moving
on.
That stunted development has had consequences on their daily lives, their relationships
and their emotions.
Steve's fear of carrying mental illness within his genes pushed him to get a vasectomy and
lie to his wife for years, knowing that she wants children.
His marriage is now in a state of limbo.
Shirl's interest in being a mortician and funeral director is closely tied to her mother's
death.
Now her business is losing money and won't be successful if she doesn't change some of
her financial practices.
Theo has always been inside her own bubble: in proximity to her family but at a distance
emotionally.
She's been living in her sister's guest house but closes herself off to everyone.
She has felt so many negative things in the past, and through her job, so she wants to
have the least amount of contact as possible.
Luke has been numbing away his fear and pain for years through his drug use.
He's been clean for a while, but he must face his ghosts if he wants to progress.
The one that best represents the characters' physical and emotional imprisonment is Hugh.
Not only is he stuck in this horrible situation, but his mind is captive to the past.
He maintains a conversation with amalgamation of the memories of his deceased wife.
When he walks into the wake, he sees his children as they were when they were kids, even Nell.
When he is wandering the hallway, looking for a restroom, he finds himself back in Hill
House.
All of the Crains are haunted by their past, but none more than Hugh because he's known
the truth all this time and is now being forced to face it before any more of his family succumbs
to their old home.
The bubbling emotions in addition to the external strains from the funeral culminate in an all-out
verbal spar between the family members.
The Crains are forced to express what has been bothering them or holding them back for
years.
The ugly truth is unwillingly unearthed by the unending moment.
Their strife is in no way resolved but at least their thoughts are finally out in the
open.
Nell breaks the spell by toppling her coffin, taking her family's attention away from their
current argument and back to herself, the one who brought them together through
her passing.
It isn't until that moment that the piano theme begins to play softly.
The shots' length regains its traditional duration as the camera's previous ballet settles
down.
The storm has passed, time finds its pace but the family will have to face the consequences
of their own choices as well as the ghosts within their former home in order to be free.
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