“Bly Manor”: Slow Burn, Fewer Chills than “Hill”
Two things about The Haunting of Bly Manor, released in full on Netflix on October 9th: first, despite having the same creative team and many cast members in common with 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House, the two series are completely unconnected. And second, Bly Manor is the lesser of the two, if by only a little.
The Haunting of Bly Manor is directly connected to the Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw – the 35th such filmed adaptation of that tale – but relocated to the high-waisted pants era that is 1987 Great Britain.
Victoria Pedretti (she was Nell in Hill House) plays Dani, the unfortunate governess sent to the creepy manor to care for the two orphans. Hill‘s Henry Thomas, affecting a British accent, is the uncle who sends her there to care for his niece and nephew in the way that he simply can’t.
You definitely know something is off – the terrifying ghost appears briefly in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment before we even get to the manor. But once there, it takes a while for the horror to take hold.
The kids are cute, if appropriately creepy, and the rest of the household staff are seemingly normal (iZombie‘s Rahul Kohli is a comic delight here) so it takes a while for the story to start chilling the bones.
Enter a blast from the past: Oliver Jackson Cohen (another Hill House alum) as Peter, who we find is the man mixed up in the tragic death of the previous governess. There are also a shocking developments told in flashback about Flora and Miles, the two children.
All in all, The Haunting of Bly Manor is scary and enjoyable, but so far does not pack the dual punches of a story that is both gut-wrenching and utterly frightening, as Hill House was. Without that comparison to damn it, it’s well worth the time to watch.
I feel that this was too slow, the show could have had half the episodes with the same effect. Some parts are worth watching, but fighting sleep to get to the good parts. The characters do a good enough job, but some of the quote mysteries were easy enough to solve amid all of the clues.
I went in with a rush, excited to see what would follow the thriller that was Hill House but almost immediately it was all-too familiar. I watched The Turning earlier this year (Mackenzie Davis owns me after Terminator: Dark Fate) & the first four episodes are basically that. But episode five is where things turned around for me. The deeper delve into the individual characters & how/where/when of them got to me. Bly Manor’s Hannah Grose is warmer than The Turning’s version & T’Nia is gorgeous and has the most brilliant smile. iZombie’s Rahul Kholi brought Owen to life with that same charm he brought Ravi, but with more dad humor that really won me over. But I gotta say, to me, what really sold me on this season was the LGBT storyline. I won’t go too deep to avoid spoilers, but I gotta say Victoria Pedrerti & Amelia Eve gave such a sweet and genuine performance, by the end of episode nine, THIS normally stoic media consumer had rivers running down her face. I loved it.