Bring your gasoline and count to seven because we have the scariest film to come out on Netflix since a Christmas Prince
Netflix's the haunting of Hell House is truly a horrific tale that masterfully blends family drama with horror while weaving a complex
Mythology around Hill House and its many ghostly entities. Now because this show is so massive
This video is split into two parts half one explaining the ghosts and half two explaining the ending
So if you want to skip the first portion and get right to the ending, I've left a link in the description now
Let's get into the fun stuff
The haunting of Hill House is filled with dozens of ghosts some we see and actually play a role in the story others
We don't see but are mentioned like the unblinking lady the boy from episode one believes is his grandmother or car horn Karl who Steve
Investigates in that episode as well. Finally there are mystery ghosts who show up hidden in the frame like here here or here?
We don't know anything about them and they have no impact on the story
so for the purposes of this segment
We're gonna focus on those ghosts that we see and affect
The storyline first is the bent neck lady or as we find out in episode 5
Nelly drawn back to the home after being haunted by her and at the suggestion of her therapist to confront her demons
Nelly ventures back to Hill House only to be seduced by its charm
Ultimately ending in her hanging and when she does so we realized it was her all along
The ghost of the bent neck lady was her haunting her as a child and through her adult life how that's possible
I'll discuss in the ending segment the bent neck lady or dead Nelly acts as a benevolent ghost
Helping the kids out from their dreams in the Red Room
Warning them away from Hill House and even getting pissed off when they fight with each other
Her ghost is arguably the most important because Nellie's death is what brings all the kids together
Forcing them to confront their traumas and move on with their lives if it weren't for Nelly the bent neck lady
Luke would still be an addict Steve would still be estranged from his wife Theo would
Continue to distance herself from others and Shirley would still live with the guilt of her affair. Not so benevolent is Olivia the matron
Ark of the family after killing herself alundra the spell of poppy Hill who we'll get to in a minute
She spends her time trying to get the children back to Hill House
She wants to be with them forever or as she calls it awake which is just Hill House speak for dead
In fact in episode 9. She says she wishes she could just freeze them. Keep them young forever
This is especially evident in episode 10 when Luke overdoses and is confronted with his mother at the tea party
He can sit and stay with her forever. But it's young Nelly who tells him don't go before older
Nelly brings him out of his dream Olivia tells Hugh at the end. She wants to keep them there to protect them
These kids aren't ready for the world out there the pain the sorrow
And she's partly right? Look at how they all turned out after her death at least in Hill House
Nothing bad will touch them
But he reminds her nothing good will either Olivia also appears as a coping?
mechanism for Hugh
Helping him with what to say to his children at Nellie's funeral as Steve says in episode 1 ghosts can take many forms
But most times they are a wish Hugh wants to see his wife
So he imagines her Luke later calls him out on it reminding him what he said when he was a child
big boys know the difference between what is real and
imaginary our third ghost delves into the history of Hill House with poppy Hill the wife of William Hill the bowler hat man and
Sister-in-law to Hazel Hill the old lady Clara looked after on her deathbed
Poppy met William at the mental asylum where they were both patients when they got out they married and moved to Hill House
hazel and poppy had a tumultuous relationship
Hazel calling her a liar - Olivia when poppy tries to get her to kill her children
Poppy had three children with William. All three of which is heavily implied. She killed in her conversation with Olivia
She recounts how all of them died notably her son who lost feeling in his legs and died cold in her arms
We even get a glimpse of him in episode 6
He's the wheelchair boy Olivia sees in her dream during the storm
poppy went mad believing she can save her kids from the hardships of the world by killing them or as she refers to it as
Awakening them she then tries to get Olivia to do the same with her
Children and this mental episode could have been partly brought upon by her husband's infidelity
William Hill aka the tall man with the cane was Poppy's husband
We learned in Episode seven that he walled himself in Hill House in an attempt to escape from the demons
fear and guilt the fear and guilt coming from his affair with a
Housemaid Horace, Dudley tells Hugh that he was born in Hill House and his mother worked there
He could often hear his mother giggling to herself
Outside their cottage as if talking to someone
Leading me to believe that horse is the illegitimate son of William Hill and poppy likely knew about her husband's love for women in Episode
Nine. She says to Olivia
In episode 10 trish tells Theo that she once knew a man who had two sisters fear and guilt every day
They turned him a little more mad
He walled himself in to get away from them his fear and guilt made him feel small
But when he awoke he was tall that was his dream. That is the story of William Hill
We then have Abigail the daughter of Horace and Clara Dudley
We first see her as Luke's imaginary friend, but at this point it's reasonable to believe she is real
It's only when Olivia arrives back and has the poisoned tea party that Abigail dies and joins the countless other ghosts in Hill House
Horace and Clara
seeing their daughter's ghost make a deal with Hugh that they'll keep his secret to save his children's memory of Olivia as long as he
Doesn't burn down Hill House this deal made out of the love for their child who they can now visit anytime they want
In the final episode Horace brings a dying Clara to Hell House, so she too can be with Abigail forever
We then have who I like to call the Scotch drinking man
Ryan Quayle who is first seen in episode 2 and not again until
Episode 6 seeing as this show defines a ghost broadly. For example, they can be a memory daydream grief or guilt among other things
Ryan is Shirley's guilty ghost
She had a one-night stand with him while out the embalming convention very romantic and she never told her husband about it
He continually haunts her as a reminder of her guilt
We also have Luke who for a brief moment appears as a ghost to Nelly
His ghostly appearance is because he actually dies for a brief moment before being resuscitated
We then have a cadre of minor ghosts who appear as daydreams hallucinate fears and wishes. There's mr
smiley the
manifestation of young Kelsie's molesting foster father who took the form of the floorboards
witch Theo saw the clock
Repairman whose sole purpose in the plot is to prove to Steve that he was seeing ghosts all the time
But he just didn't realize it
We then have lead Joey and Shirley who all turned into
Manifestations of fears for Steven Luke and Shirley herself the ghosts in haunting of Hill House provide the impetus for change in our characters
They are what make our characters confront their traumas and it's the ending of Hill House that really solidifies this message
Only by confronting our troubles can we no longer be haunted by the past and strive to live better lives
As Nellie's therapist says in Episode five, her real problem is not her siblings
It's not
Confronting the pain of her past the events of Hill House created traumas for our characters each one coping with them in different
Ways from Luke's addiction Theo's meaningless sex and inability to open up
Nellie's depression Shirley the control freak or Steve's unwillingness to see the truth their ways of coping like Luke's drugs. For example
Don't get at the core of what caused these traumas in the first place. They are merely band-aids
It's only when each character is confronted by their worst fear in the Red Room that they must face it head-on
There is no place to hide here
Steve must confront his belief that if he had a child
It'll turn out diseased like his mother Shirley must confront her infidelity
Luke his addiction which he overcomes by choosing not to die and Theo her inability to open up and let others love her
Bottling up our trauma keeping secrets only makes things worse and those things can haunt us
Perhaps the greatest encapsulation of this is when Shirley confronts her dead body in episode 10
The funeral manager tells her on the outside
She is fixed and pretty but on the inside she is a horror. Our greatest Horrors are not what's on the outside
They are buried within us when Nellie releases them all from their dreams
They each have a chance to apologize to her
But she tells them she knows they all love each other unconditionally and that love is all that matters
The rest is confetti. Interesting is her speech about time stating that she used to think it was linear
But it's more like rain moments falling around
This explains how she as a younger girl saw herself as the bent neck lady
The Red Room according to Nelly is like the stomach of the house putting on faces so it can slowly
Digest them Hugh even tells Steve that the house has called the Mack because they're like an unfinished meal a stomach breaks down into pieces
What we put into it
Just like how the Red Room breaks down the crane family when Hugh and Steven drive to Hill House Hugh makes reference to the clock
repairman in the overalls with the handlebar mustache
He tells Stephen about witness marks scars found on antique clocks
Which show the repairs that have been done to them Hill House is much like an antique clock and the characters are the witness marks
Whatever that life is bear witness the crane family even came there to repair the house
Remember that Hugh and Olivia are house flippers and just like an antique clock. There is no record of their previous repairs, hence
Why Olivia must recreate floor plans and why we know so little about the previous tenants
We the viewer will see the damage through the other characters who bear witness to these ghostly
Beings as I said before it's only by confronting their traumas their hearts of darkness do the characters
Leave Hill House healed Stephen reconciles with his father and Leigh
We even get a short glimpse of Lea pregnant at the end with Luke celebrating his recovery
Shirley comes clean about her infidelity to her husband and Theo moves out throwing away her gloves and apparently in a
relationship with Trish who she had constantly pushed away
But the house gives and takes and the price for this was Hugh at the end of the episode
We see that Hugh has died and he says a final farewell to Stephen before joining Olivia and Nellie
I believe that when he said goodbye to his
children as they fled he was already dead and they were seeing him as a ghost that his death was a deal he made with
Olivia to let his children go free when Hugh tells Liv to let them go
She breaks down telling them that she'll be alone again a few moments later
He tells her that he'll make a promise that will last forever
But we as the viewer never get to hear what that promise is
he tells her let me fix it and
Sacrifices himself to be with Olivia in exchange for letting the children go take a look at Olivia's face
Looking back at Stephen when Hugh goes to join them in the Red Room. It's not one of happiness
It's one of a woman who just let her children go knowing it will be longer before they're finally
reunited last but not least is Stephens monologue about love and fear how they both involve the relinquishment of
Logic this willing relinquishment of reasonable patterns. We either give into it or fight it. There's no meeting halfway
Without it. We cannot continue to live sanely under conditions of absolute reality
And that's what our characters have tried to do ever
Since they left Hill House meet in that halfway
And it's only when they give in to love to be honest with one another that they can all live sanely in the absolute reality
Never to be haunted again
the haunting of Hill House is an emotional tale one that shows us our greatest fears lay in our innermost horrors our
Traumas the pain to take on those traumas is sometimes too much and we cope with drugs sex or the easy way out
It's only when we confront our demons that they can no longer exist and it's through that confrontation that we become stronger
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until next time