Spencer Klavan is an associate editor of the Claremont Review of Books and host of the Young Heretics podcast.
Mike Flanagan is awfully talented, but he’s just not making any sense. I want to like everything he makes — including his latest Halloween horror show on Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher. It’s based on Edgar Allan Poe’s unforgettable short story of the same name, with plot elements from Poe’s other fiction and poetry.
Old masters such as Jackson and Poe hold up in their own right; they would benefit from being freshly adapted in earnest. It’s a little bizarre that Flanagan, who obviously admires their craft, would pick up their stories only to mine them for spooky vibes like literary Pinterest boards. Be that as it may, his work is effectively original and deserves to be judged in its own right — for better or for worse.
That was the deal: Episode by episode, the assorted nepo babies are picked off in macabre fashion by a mysteriously ageless woman . This spectral wine aunt once offered Roderick and his sister Madeline immunity from the law as they murdered and cheated their way to hyper-affluence. In exchange, she gets to extinguish the Usher bloodline.
In which case, what the hell is the point? If souls are just fairy tales, what on earth are all these vampires and death-ladies doing hanging about? They seem real enough. But since humanity is just a passing dream, there is no conceivable reason why they should have any interest in us. They can’t save or damn our souls, so all that’s left for them to do is lecture us nonsensically about politics.
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