re: The Haunting of Bly Manor thread

Hill House was all about backstory. This is no different. Intensity picked up in the second half of episode 2

First two episodes were good! Both kids are little shits it seems like of course

It picks up as it goes. Still have a few episodes to go. But it’s very much in the feel of The Others, one of my favorite horror movies, where it’s more atmospheric than jump scares. Easily on par with Hill House, the cast is great

This show is boring as hell...

It was an entertaining watch but no where near as good as Hill House

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Hill House was great. This was not, and it's 75% because of the editing and 25% because of the writing.


The actors all did a great job with the exception of...shite I can't remember her name. She's Nell in Hill House and the nanny in Bly. Anyway whatever her name was. She gives the weakest performance IMO because she's doing that irritating thing where she always sounds like she's hyperventilating and out of breath to add emotional gravitas but to me it's annoying as hell.

That's really a nitpick though and overall the actors sell the bad editing/writing as much as humanly possible.


The editing/writing:

The HAUNTING of Bly Manor is extremely light on the haunting part.

Hill House was a commentary on the nature of grief and loss wrapped in a horror story.

Bly Manor is supposed to be a commentary on the nature of love wrapped in a horror story, but it's barely wrapped in horror at all. If Hill House is the Christmas present expertly wrapped by my grandmother Bly Manor is the one poorly wrapped by me with newspaper and duct tape.

A big problem with the lack of horror is the writing - there isn't enough written into the episodes - but what is there isn't edited in and paced anywhere near as effectively as what was in Hill House.

Hill House was expertly written and edited so that the mythology of the house and the nature of the haunting and all these little puzzle pieces to the mystery were woven into each episode. We slowly see each child and each parents' story then and now. Nothing makes sense at first, but everything is slowly revealed and is intertwined into a great payoff at the finale.


Bly Manor could've done the same thing by slowly telling us the 17th century story by interspersing it with the other episodes and the inclusion of more horror activity, but for whatever reason they chose not to. Instead they crammed all the mythology into the single 17th century black-and-white episode, and it's basically just a bunch of exposition explaining to us directly how and why the house is haunted like we're 5 years old. Hill House never did this. Even at the end when the ghost of Nell is explaining how the room is like the stomach where the house is digesting its victims, there's still more left to interpretation and imagination than what is fully explained to us.

The hour of exposition is made even worse by the fact that the horror elements are so sparse and the exposition so deep into the season that I hardly cared about the mythology of the house at all by then because it barely even mattered.

The dolls? Nah whatever, they don't really matter. Perdita in the attic? Nah whatever, Flora shushes her that one time but other than that she's irrelevant to the whole story. The little boy? Doesn't really matter, we're shown why he's there but he's irrelevant. The soldier we see that one time between the staircases in the main hall? We're given a little exposition but he's otherwise irrelevant. Same for the doctor, the priest, etc.

It's like they got so sidetracked writing and filming a love story for the nanny and the gardener that they forgot this was supposed to be a horror story.

What else...

Alot of it felt extremely derivative of The Others, The Skeleton Key, and What Dreams May Come. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt that it's derivative, or maybe it's paying homage. That's alot of benefit of the doubt though, honestly I think it's straight plagiarizing from those sources.

Oh yeah, it feels low budget compared to Hill House. I don't know how that's possible with the success of Hill House but this feels like it was made by an indie skeleton crew by comparison.







End of spoilers TLDR:


Good acting not enough to salvage bad writing and bad editing. Good editing could've salvaged it from the bad writing, but unfortunately it's shite. I wish it weren't the case, but Bly Manor is shite.

To episode 7 now. Floria is absolutely great. I wish they did a better back story on the house. Also annoying how Netflix has to jam a gay or lesbian scene into every show. They just jam it on in story be dammed.

If I want to watch girls kiss I can go to a porn site. I really don’t care if a character is gay or not but it’s annoying as hell to force it in to every story. Why can’t they just write something competent?

At least this one wasn’t as bad as sticking it in a period piece.

Well to clarify I don’t care if they are gay if it has a reason in the story or is to the source material. It really wouldn’t be an issue if it wasn’t jammed into every Netflix series.

Which Netflix has decided period be dammed there must be gay characters.