“House of Usher” rejuvenates Netflix horror catalog

It always starts with a storm. For horror director Mike Flanagan, a dark, gray storm is the ultimate omen of true horror. As the lightning flashes, two siblings mourn the untimely death of their mother in the darkness of their once warm and welcoming suburban house. Their mother was a stubborn woman who refused treatment for her illness; when she passed, the children were quick to bury her in her own backyard, such that she could stay with her home forever. Lightning flashes in the dark sky once again over the house, and the dirt above Mother’s grave starts to push upwards. The children still sit in the house, but when lightning flashes next, a dark dirt-covered silhouette stands in the doorway…

This is a scene from the first episode of Mike Flanagan’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a Netflix horror/drama series that readapts the classic literature of Edgar Allan Poe. The show keeps its dark, gothic feel while adding new and modern technological themes and elements. The show uses Flanagan’s signature format, the miniseries—usually six to ten episodes to tell a full story, and, in Flanagan’s case, typically adapted from some kind of horror literature.

In this dark horror tale, the Usher family, comprising Roderick Usher and his six adult children, are picked off one by one (one per episode to be exact) by a mysterious shape-shifting woman. The woman is found at the scene of all crimes, but she cannot be traced back to anything human. As we trace back Roderick’s steps into his childhood and early life, we slowly unravel the identity of the woman and the reasons that such horrors could be happening. Each death, told in a somewhat anthological format, is loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, with many visual callbacks and quotes that directly relate to the author.

This story is told beautifully, and it unravels like a ball of string, slowly revealing more until nothing is left. As you learn to sympathize with and even hate the characters, and their fates become much more intriguing to you by the end of the series. The series proves a masterful way to adapt old literature into a new story and it works amazingly to convey the message of the story and keep the classics current. An amazing tale of greed, grief, and gore, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is sure to scare audiences everywhere.