Its been a very long time since Ive learn the works of Edgar Allan Poe, again in my highschool and faculty daysso lengthy that I forgot simply how tousled and morbid his stuff might be.
Director-producer Mike Flanagan hasnt forgotten, as evidenced in his scary, twisted, fashionable tackle Poe in The Fall of the Home of Usher, one other nice horror collection from the person who gave us Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill Home.
Flanagan takes the works of Poe and weaves them right into a story about fashionable enterprise greed, the opioid disaster and issues which might be merely freaky and scary. The eight episodes, most titled after the works of Poe, arent thorough retellings of Poes tales, however his spirit runs all through themand when characters, particularly Bruce Greenwoods Trump-like Roderick Usher, quote Poe immediately, its a spectacular factor.
Greenwoods Usher is on the middle of this gothic universe, because the collection offers along with his pharmaceutical empire, his six children and their odd deaths. Roderick calls his outdated nemesis, C. Auguste Dupin, to his dilapidated childhood residence for a type of confession: Roderick has simply misplaced all of six youngsters, who died inside weeks of one another, and hes going to inform Auguste the entire story, beginning within the 50s, about how he wound up on this perilous place.
The eight episodes happen in two timelinesone in 2023, the place Roderick and Auguste are conferring, and the opposite depicting a youthful Roderick (Zach Gilford as a younger man, and Graham Verchere as a teen) and twin-sister Madeline (performed youthful by Willa Fitzgerald and Lulu Wilson, and within the current by Mary McDonnell) all through the traumas of their youth and younger maturity. The twins began out virtuous, however their deeds turned extra treacherous because the years glided by.
The supporting solid is great, together with Carla Gugino as Verna, a seemingly ageless girl who performs a component in practically every little thing that occurs. Henry Thomas, discovering a pleasant secondary profession for himself in Flanagan initiatives, is excellent as Frederick, the eldest, and seemingly nicest, of the Usher siblings (till, effectively, he isnt). Mark Hamill distinguishes himself as Arthur Pym, a grizzly henchman for Roderick and his drug empire. Its maybe one of the best appearing Hamill has carried out outdoors of the Star Wars franchise.
Poes works, together with The Masque of the Pink Loss of life, The Telltale Coronary heart and, in fact, The Raven, seem in delightfully horrific methods. Flanagan, who co-wrote the scripts, has many unique concepts and themes at play right here, and so they all tie collectively neatly in the long run as a splendidly sick tribute to the legendary Poe.
The Fall of the Home of Usher is now streaming on Netflix.
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Originally posted 2023-10-30 18:38:21.