@Cata CF, this is the hardest truth all of us have to learn. I've sat on my therapist's couch agonizing over how I just can't pity myself because so many other people have it so much worse. And he told me that "Just because others are hurting, doesn't mean you're not hurting too" I try to be kind to myself - it's hard to do but I try to remember that my traumas and sufferings are not negated just because someone else has what-in-my-mind-is-worse trauma.
Everyone experiences pain and loss sooner or later. Remember that for others too. We have all loved and lost. That others experience trauma isn't a contest. It's hope that we can heal and have a life that goes on. It's just a matter of figuring out what you need to do it yourself. I found Nell's death cathartic. Sometimes a piece of you has to die with whatever else you let go of. For many of us who experience loss for the first time that piece is some form of innocence. It's tragic but we can find wisdom and maturity as we learn to live again. Sorry for the word vomit. Going through alot lately and pondering alot.
Mike Flanagan just posted on his new tumblr account that he watched this video, and borrowed the poem you referenced for use in Midnight Club. Mike Flanagan watched and enjoyed your video. If you didn't already know, I had to come and tell you, because I think I'd die of joy in your situation.
What makes the “None of you could see me.” Line more heartbreaking is that it was true for adult Nell while she was alive. None of her siblings really took time out to be concerned about her after her husband’s passing or thought about her mental health issues. When she calls them they all ignore her. Also what Hugh says in Two Storms about her always asking “Santa” for gifts for her siblings but never herself. He also said as she got older she still sent him letters and always talked about how her siblings were doing never herself. Olivia encouraged Nell’s selflessness as a child, but as I saw someone say once, Nell took that as having no self. She never looked out for herself but did for others. It’s a crime this show didn’t get any Emmy nominations, but it’s a crime against humanity especially that Victoria Pedretti didn’t get one.
I just teared up from that quote at the end of this video and I don’t really know why tbh. I don’t tear up easily. Maybe it was just how intense Victoria Pedretti delivered the line
I think one important little thing people miss Is Luke's seven keeps you safe. At the very end when hes by the cake with everyone around him there are seven people there. I thought that was a very well thought out moment
What I found really sad about Nell’s ending was that, presumably, she would never be reunited with her husband in the afterlife. She gets to be reunited with her parents and that’s nice(-ish), but she was just so devastated by his loss that I can’t really be happy about her being trapped in hill house for all eternity. And plus it’s not even like her mom’s ghost reverted back to her pre-insanity personality, this is still the lady who straight up murdered her
Me neither. Ultimately, Nell doesn't actually get a happy or even remotely bittersweet ending. She's trapped in a house that terrified her, with her father (which is okay, I guess) and her mother whose been completely devoured by the darkness of the house and is the reason she died and cannot be with her husband again. It's just miserable.
You can’t understand Shirley or Steven until you’ve been the older sibling who HAS to hold it all together while processing your own trauma. Cause if you look away too long who knows what trouble the younger ones will get into. Which they do cause they took their eyes off them.
that whole episode is brilliant. I didn't get the twin thing at first, I thought Luke was going to a withdrawal of sort (feeling cold and joint pain is common in heroin withdrawal).
Preach. I woke up once in my teens with a hag woman in a tattered wedding dress floating above me just like the Bent Neck Lady in the show. That scene brought the memory back and its still haunting me
I am the same way. I'm a 34 year old mother of 2 and that scared the shit out of me and still does. That was such great writing but absolutely terrified me.
Watching it again made me realize that the reason why Luke was able to finally get clean was because Nell stopped taking her medication. She sacrificed her mental health for his recovery. 😭
Sometimes I think people conflate hating a character with being frustrated with that character. Steven is very frustrating, but he’s also understandable and sympathetic.
Steve gets a bad rap. He definitely said some douchey things (or maybe just with lack of consideration for others' feelings). This didn't put me off too much, considering Theo was often REALLY mean-spirited but we all love her. Steve was tragic because his denial made him so isolated and alone. His psychosomatic NEED to have an explanation for everything and to only have to believe in the "real" and tangible made him more vulnerable to the house than even Nellie herself. Hugh even told him that (more-or-less). It was nuts to me that Steve walked in and immediately started seeing the ghosts and horrors for what they were - without the pleasant facade. I think that's huge. The house knew it couldn't "fool" or gaslight him because he had done that to himself his whole life. He successfully created a life where he changed his childhood realities and could actually somewhat live normally. It was always going to be alone, but he would survive. The house had to give him its ugly reality and in a twisted way it helped him come to terms with his own.
A lot of my frustration with Steven stemmed from that know-it-all attitude that older siblings tend to have to their younger ones. It's very frustrating when as a younger sibling, you make a valid and rational point or you try to reach out in a time of emotional turmoil and you get dismissed as being immature or too young to know what you're talking about. It's that certain kind of above-it-all attitude that really bothers people, myself included. The point at which he becomes tolerable is when he starts becoming vulnerable and he has some humility when he realises that Nell and his father weren't just being crazy.
My gripe is you can’t say you care about others and their mental health and then publish a book which was very much in his power not to publish that would harm those others greatly … just a whole dick I do not care for him even a tiny bit … it was only cathartic for him to be proven wrong and that was it
I had a sort of feeling that it was her.. Wenever Nell sees the Bent Neck Lady floating over her, you can hear the BNL saying "no no no no no no", as if the BNL was in denial of something, or didn't want to be there, traumatizing this child. Also, since there was this seemingly undeniable fact that Nellie killed herself, it made sense to think that maybe her neck snapped while she hung herself. Still, that scene where we find out that it really is her was definitely heart wrenching. I cried HARD
that "I was right here the entire time, no one could see me" line is heartbreaking, that scene brings tears to my eyes...both actresses playing Nell delivered an incredible performance, and by the end of the show I didn't feel scared of the Bent-neck Lady, I just felt sorry for Nell.
Exactly, and I think during, and then after her funeral, she became more active because she wanted her siblings to quit fighting. She's in the background the night before the funeral, then she switches off the lights to talk to her dad, and then shoves her body and casket off of the stand right in the middle of the fight. And so on and so forth. I think it speaks volumes that out of the children, she was arguably the one with the most (continuous) trauma from the house, yet Nell was still able to bear the brunt of the red room.
That was a wonderful video essay, thanks so much. I just finished this show and wanted to live in it more and discuss it with someone and this really did that for me.
It really is the kind of show that stays with you and makes you want to live in it with other people, that’s why I return to videos like this one again and again - there’s something more you can get hearing someone else discuss the show rather than just watching it alone again…
My husband and I spend hours discussing it like multiple times a month since it came out. It's had such a profound impact on us. This video is a pretty good way to scratch the itch if you don't have a discussion partner around.
Okay but can we talk about how Shirley's guilt and grief drive her to try to patch things up and make them be Okay when they can't be, and how she *absolutely* takes after Hugh in that way? When she says, "I'm gonna fix you," an echo of Hugh's "I can fix this", and you realize that she's desperately trying to undo her failures and taking *way* too much on for herself and ultimately making everything worse just like Hugh did, it's *gutting.*
It's the only thing that redeems her in my eyes. I couldn't stand Shirley compared to every other kid, even Steven, because of her hypocrisy and controlling personality which to me is the most annoying way any of them dealt with their trauma. However when you see her becoming Hugh in the way she has to fix everything, it makes the controlling bits a lot easier to swallow.
@@evangelionl0vr857 As someone who struggles heavily with control and anger issues, and who has a really bad habit of trying to Fix things with dramatic gestures to alleviate guilt, yeah, Shirley hits home for me. She's just as scared as the rest of them.
@@koboldcatgirl I have anger issues too, and always try to fix things, but unlike Shirley, I internalize all of it and where she lashes out at others, I just lash out at myself lol. I related to Steven a lot, but that was older brother stuff and him thinking he was the logical, clear headed one.
@@evangelionl0vr857 Honestly, we lash out at ourselves, too, just in an even less helpful way that doesn't really let us process what we need to get better about. A man in the corner raises his glass to us now and again, is all. x3
I know, I find it very rare to have a show where every child actor is amazing and doesn't take me out of the experience, especially when they're so young
I think all except the eldest son. I feel that his dialogue was cheesy and out dated. His delivery was cold and unnatural. His scenes made me cringe because it almost felt like a disconnected counselor trying to fake empathy towards a student.
@@FluoxetinaBelcher but I think part of that was just his character, as he was in deep denial about everything that happened while he was in hill house. However, I do agree that he didn't stand out like the other kids did.
alternate reading: all the Crain females had gifts or were "sensitive". the mother Olivia mentioned that their grandmother too was the same. Olivia herself had "deja-vus", but they were more like flashbacks, & dream /waking visions. following her mother, Shirley's ability was also linked to the subconcious. she only had premonitions in her sleep, through sleeptalking. but my guess is that whatever latent abilities she had, she suppressed them as a way to "fix" it. which explains her career choice of "fixing" the effects of death. something powerful that she can control & contain. Theo's power was the most obvious, which helped her get to Truth. this also shaped her professional pursuit as a child psychologist, to help them by seeing the truth behind their traumas. Nell was actually the most powerful of the Crain women. her gift was Clarity. she claimed the house was "loud" when they first moved in, before anything started happening. in her letters to Santa as a child, she was able to dictate all the things her siblings needed, even the stuff her parents were not aware of. the house knew this from day one and reprogrammed her the night of the storm where she was unseen by the rest of her family. it successfully set the tone for her life - to dull her clarity. society, her family, prescriptive drugs did the rest. why is she the most powerful? because as she hanged from the noose, her death was the biggest moment of clarity for her. it was like waking up, as her mother put it. she was so powerful that at full clarity, she was able to go back psionically to try to warn herself. this was a feat she managed to do stretching the fabric of space and time. that was the (full?) magnitude of her power, and the house wanted it the moment it saw her.
I would say the twin thing also relates to being "sensitive" considering it allows them to feel things that would be impossible without something supernatural going on.
This. Comment. Thank you. I thought the same. I think Steve has powers too. He was the only one who was to enter the Red Room's version of Luke. No other sibling could do that, I think?
@@saya1720_ I agree! Steve also saw ghosts in the house (like the man fixing the clock). And I also think Luke had "gifts" because of the "twin thing" and he was able to see/hear/feel paranormal stuff too... So I think all kids were "sensitive" not just the woman
I really like that theory, it seems like one more subtext to explore in this rats maze of a show. The issue that always struck me about Nell was the fact she was seeing the BNL over her whole life, EXCEPT when she was dating and then married to Arthur. It was only after his death that she saw BNL again. It was as if Destiny had been interrupted by Arthur’s presence, and could only be righted by his death. I’m not saying the House killed Arthur, but it’s interesting that her fate seems to have changed when he was around.
A really tragic detail about Nell’s ghost’s costume design in the final episode is the necklace. Because it was the noose in disguise. Shackling her to Hill House. Oof
“i loved you completely, and you loved me the same, that’s all. the rest is confetti” makes me cry EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. including the end of this video so thanks for that.
@@Ladyknightthebrave completely agree. Also I have such a nostalgic soft spot for the first Spy Kids film so that just added this new later of unease at seeing her slow descent unfold in the show. I know that's not something everyone can relate to but it definitely affected my viewing experience.
Nell looks sad at first but then smiles as they hug. I think it's because that despite saving and uniting all of her siblings, she couldn't save her dad. She then realizes that even though he's dead, they'll get to be together forever. As for Olivia, she has a slight smile on her face right before she stares at Steven as the door closes. I think she's happy to be with Hugh again, but at the cost of the rest of her children, who she'll have to wait even longer for until they can all finally be together.
@@AtlantisTheLostEmpire That's the thing though. The remainder of the Craine siblings would have to die in the house in order for them to be together. I do think the mom will leave her children alone now that she has Hough but her staring at Steve seemed very longingly, probably trying to look at him one last time with him seeing her again. Plus I highly doubt any of the remaining siblings would go back to die in that house. The only one I can possibly see doing that is Luke but who knows what life had left for him in the future, hopefully something good.
She didn't want to let any of her children leave, and I think she knew that Steve would be the most vulnerable one to pick apart and keep there. Ever since that last night at Hill House all he had wanted to know was what really happened to make his mom do what she did, and there's so much trauma to play with in their little dream illusions that it probably does sort of feel like a hungry predator letting their next meal walk free. The dead look in her eyes is pretty scary.
When Nell is describing how time is nonlinear, I thought back to the storms, and it's a stretch, I know, but when Nell couldn't be found during the storm in their childhood, i couldn't help but think that the two timelines were occuring at the same time. they couldn't find nell because she was already dead during the second storm. You can't be seen if you dont exist anymore. That whole episode broke my heart lol
I’ll be honest, Steven made me the most mad, but by the end I felt the most bad for him. His wife wanted kids, but he let her live on with the notion that it was HER FAULT they couldn’t conceive. But once you get to those final (powerful) scenes of him and his father, it all comes together. He thought his mom was mentally ill (which she most likely was, but it was heightened with the house) and he thought his dad killed his mom. He didn’t think that he could be okay with putting a child into the world, that may inherit his family’s craziness or even subject them to the same trauma if he turned out like either one of his parents.
@@emiloenix Probably because he let her live on with the notion that it was HER FAULT they couldn't conceive. Not to put words in someones mouth, but that's probably my guess.
@@emiloenix …I was quoting the original commenter. I personally never got mad at him, he just always annoyed me by being a tad bit condescending with the woman in the first episode.
WTF I DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE THATS WHAT WAS HAPPENING DURING LUKE’S EPISODE. I thought he was cold due to exposure to the elements but it makes SO MUCH SENSE. Damn. That’s sad.
I thought it was a withdrawal symptom the first time I saw it. Then I thought it was just cold outside I think I realized the twin thing on my 5th viewing of the series. lol
@@atreestump @atreestump his arc was just so upsetting because of the "twin thing" that makes him feel more human than just an "addict". Which im assuming that's what they were going for. Like, i do wish there was a mix of him actually being an addict and him Being just being a good heart. People can be both! Like, drugs very much change who you are Agabkf
That red room scene was perfect. Nells monologue is so good. And her forgiving her siblings really hit a chord with me. Often when someone commits suicide people around them feel guilty for not somehow preventing it. Nell was able to save them from that guilt, and I think without the guilt the house didnt really have an emotion to feed on any more. Thus by saving her siblings from their guilt she saved them from the house.
What gut-punched me was the "I'm sorry I didn't answer the phone." "But you did. So many times." Often when we lose someone we get SO hung up on the last interaction, as if that was what counted the most, because it was the end, but that isn't true at all. We never, or rather, rarely know when the end comes, and to deny ourselves anger or fear or even selfishness in the hope of creating a perfect end is unrealistic and in a way cruel. The last thing we say to each other is just that, the last. And that doesn't erase all that's been said and done before, and those things don't count less just because they weren't the last.
@@Ladyknightthebrave but did you think Steven should have asked his siblings permission to published the book because he never hear their side of the story
I'm sooooo glad Flanagan didn't go with the red room twist ending. I mean it's basically the exact same ending as Inception. And it didn't even work in that movie, it was a cheap way of making Christopher Nolan look smart, that just left most people without a clue what Nolan was trying to say? Leaving them all in the red room and sending the message that resolution to trauma and conflict only happens in our delusions--that would've seriously tarnished the message of the show.
It's so nice to see this. I am so sick of hearing people bash on the last episode. Maybe a lot of the watchers aren't people that have been through trauma or addiction, and so they don't get it, but for once it's nice to see suffering characters get to be happy, for their to be actual 'sweet' in the 'bittersweet.' This nihilism trend has got to stop. Real life is sad enough.
You didn't understand Inception if you thought that the ending was cheap. You can figure it out since they specifically say that you can't use someone's else token, it has to be your own. The spinner is Mal's, Cobb's is his wedding ring which he still wears in the dreams because Mal is still alive there, the spinner is just to specifically show you his hands. Fischer and Mal aren't the only ones going through inception, Cobb and the Viewers also go through it, it's a 4-way Inception with only 2 taking, or 3 in the case of some viewers who didn't understand the movie and then dare to call Nolan stupid. Plus that's not even the main point or theme, there's so much more to Inception than just the ending, which not everyone needs to understand since what it makes you feel should be the main point, but I draw a line when I see people disrespecting one of the only creative directors that comes up with original movies instead of making yet another remake.
@@malsummers6515 Cobb's totem isn't his wedding ring. A totem is something that you have in both realities to test them against each other, but Cobb only has his wedding ring in one. The wedding ring is a visual indicator for the audience, not a totem for the character (much like the Red and Blue markers in Tenet). Inception doesn't say you can't use someone else's totem. It says you shouldn't because then you would be using an item that someone else knows the secret to. But there's no one alive apart from Cobb that knows the secret of his totem, so it's okay for him to use it. The point of the top is to try out inception on the audience in the exact same way Cobb tried out inception on Mal. But I agree with all of your other points.
These are my favorite things about the show: 1) When Steve sees Nell's ghost in ep. 1, she's wearing the same outfit she wore when she confronted him at the book reading (the last time Steve saw her alive). When Luke sees Nell's ghost after she died, she's wearing the same outfit she wore when she bought drugs for him (the last time Luke saw her alive). And the jumpscare in ep. 8? She was wearing her wedding dress (from what I could tell) which was what she was wearing the last time Theo and Shirley saw her alive together. 2) It takes Luke seven steps to get from his bed to Nell's 3) Each time Luke saw Nell's ghost, she said "go" and "don't" which is what young Nell told him in his near-death red room vision. 4) Literally all of ep. 6 5) How the two beds in Luke's (I know, Luke again) vision turned into one 6) That the Dudleys gave up their religion and belief of Heaven and God to stay in the house with Abigail. 7) All the new things and foreshadowing you notice the second, third, fifth time watching it
Definitely on number 7. Like the first scene of Luke's episode foreshadows Abigail by talking about a little girl dead that you see everywhere. Luke saw her everywhere alright; especially in someone like Joey. There's also a scene where Steven talks about how bad water damage can be long before we know about the black mold. And when Nell is about to die, she sees what would have been one of her last sites if her mother killed her: the tea party with all the right participants. It even happens at approximately the same time she would have died as a child. After all, while we don't know what time that incident happened at, we know it was 3 hours before Hugh called 911, and so if it was around 4 am when they got to the hotel and he drove back...well it isn't unreasonable to say the amount of light we see might make it 6 or 7. Another great bit both of foreshadow and interest is Theo talking about walls: how Mr. Hill literally died was walling himself in to protect himself from fear and guilt. I could write a whole essay on that guy and what he means to each character, Luke in particular.
@@rabbitsintheattic9889 Just finished this amazing show for the first time and need rewatch, but I think when Luke finally is strong enough to view Nell in the casket, there are 7 rows of chairs that he walks past to finally get to her.
This series was like a character study in human grief. Shirley has her moments but the scene where she’s pulling the organs out of Nell and she says “ I’m elbow deep in our sisters body cavity and you have to get two grown men to an airport, get it done” I had so much respect for her cause her and Theo get shit done.
I feel like Shirley got the short end of the stick writing wise - the cheating was a pretty uninspired ghost imo, and I found her sleep-talking interesting, it seemed to hint that she had powers too, but we never see more of that. I understand she might've suppressed her power but I think her character needed more depth
I feel like the series ended without answering all my questions. So many characters were left without given the depth they needed. What about poppy? The girl who owned the tea set before nell got it? The man who literally walled himself out of fear and guilt? Was he the same guy who was haunting Luke? And also we need more depth and info about their powers, not just theo, and the reason behind those powers. Why was the storm stronger in their place? Why was the house haunted? Was it "innate" since the beginning of its construction? Or was it because of what mr hill did? What did mr hill do? Why was steve such a dickhead?
@@Elle-ho3uu Some of these questions don't need answers. The powers don't need answers, the storm neither. We didn't need it because the serie focus on the tragedy of Hill House. Not the sensibility of the Crain. Except for Theo who has a true "gift", the other ones are just sensitive. And if you ask someone sensitive to explain it, they won't do it easily. It's just like that. They can describe how it works but not how they got it. Because it was always like that, they just are sensitive. And I think the show done pretty well with that by not explaining it. It would have been like a complete side story and Hill House is already enough to tell. We know that the ghost haunting Luke is the man found behind a wall by Hugh. I don't remember how but the show suggest it. I can be agree about Poppy, we didn't see very much about her but she was so important when you think about it. But again I understand why. The story is about the Crain and what they lived in Hill House but it's not actually about Hill House. That's why it wasn't important to put more depth to Hill House. Same with the powers, It was about a certain tragedy not about the genetics of the Crain (even if it's something Steve talks about). And we have to accept that some things weren't supernatural like the storm.
This show came out around when my father died. I understand the criticism against the show from a feminist perspective, but as a guy with an extremely complicated relationship with his dad where our one major point of bonding was over our love of horror movies, this show felt tailor made to get me to understand my own grief and actually cry unbidden over how my father died alone and in pain and it took days for him to be discovered and that all I wanted to hear from him is that he was proud to have been *my* dad. I love horror because it’s the genre best suited to face and talk about things that are painfully intimate and we can’t bring ourselves to speak plainly about because they’re too close to ourselves. I really love this show for how it helped me and I’m glad I’m not alone in that.
This is heartbreakingly beautiful man, and hey, from a feminist literary major, I do believe the show does justice to the book, which still holds many compelling female characters and plot lines, and could have some feminist undertones in the men's plot lines too (mental illness and grief in men, toxic motherhood, the reivindication of parenthood, the pressure of the big brother who has to take care of his siblings but doesn't know how to). This show was just a different take from the book that needed to be made. Those of us who have been through childhood trauma and loss of family needed this show. Also i love what you said about horror, I feel exactly the same way, it brings out human's deepest fears and struggles through the metaphor of the monstrous and uncanny.
This makes me cry... I don't have a good relationship with my mother, I blocked her out of my life for many traumas I experienced through her divorce... I don't know if I will ever accepet her in again, but I fear that what happened to your dad might happen to her... I don't know who I am anymore, honestly, or what to do... But i hope you stay strong and fight for yourself, I really send you good thoughts and condolences. I can't imagine your pain but I hope to transmit something good
I actually do think this show holds onto some of those early feminist themes: if both Olivia and Nell had been listened to and believed, it's possible they'd still be alive, which makes their deaths all the more tragic. That anxiety of not being truly seen is still there, I think especially for Olivia. It's not empowering, like you say, but I do still think it's a concern the show is dealing with.
I just wrote a comment about this myself, but I couldn’t agree more. I simply don’t agree that this show takes anything away from the feminist storylines, at all. The show made it VERY clear that Nell, Olivia, etc. should have all been listened to. The entire story could’ve been different if Nell’s calls for help had been answered. Her cries for help being ignored is what killed her, and the show makes that theme very clear.
Absolutely agree! And I would question the idea that Nell's story in the novel was particularly empowering rather than tragic as well, but this is a youtube comment and I don't have space/time for an essay. But one of the running themes throughout the show is how women are dismissed and almost forced to disappear into these predefined roles society has set up for them. Wife, mother, caretaker, victim, the crazy lady no one listens to. Olivia was literally consumed by the anxieties of motherhood. When she went to her husband, he dismissed her fears as stress and hysteria. Shirley was forced into the "oldest sister" role that SO many oldest girls find themselves in, of feeling like she had to take care of everyone and keep the family together, while Steve as the oldest boy and eldest child overall felt no such obligation. Nell's tragedy is that instead of seeking to retreat from the world via Hill House like her book counterpart, she sought answers from the house...but was eventually overcome because no one in her life listened to her or supported her. Yet even after death, she kept demanding to be listened to. Even that bit near the end that's supposed to be evidence that the show focused on Steve is basically a ghost in the guise of his wife just absolutely roasting him for the way he treats the women in his life like props and sidekicks in "his" story. And if that isn't some feminist commentary on the way men treat women in society AND write them in fiction, I don't know what is.
I just remembered that the father Hugh told Steven smth along the lines of: 'I read your book, and you have seen ghosts, too. The man you saw fix the clock? There was no man. The Tree house you played in with luke? There was no tree house.' At the end we realize that the treehouse was the red room all along. And that's crazy to me, bc I didn't really get that the first time. Really good series!
you and millions of other women. That's why I always tell my guy friends. If you need a girl to be interested in you, then don't be perfect. Girls love projects that later they can turn into boyfriends/husbands.
Nell’s final speech really helps cope with grief, or as Andrew Garfield said, “our unexpressed love”. The missed calls, the chances you’ll never get back, they all suck. But there were times you still picked up the phone, the time you still spent with your loved one, and the grief you feel towards losing that loved one. That time you gave to them matters more than the ones you missed.
I think a big reason why I personally dislike Steve is because I see myself in him and all the things I dislike about him, I dislike about myself. I, like him, am the oldest sibling of a gaggle of kids who experienced severe traumas growing. I was looked at as a mini parent by them and by our rotating cast of guardians. After a while, I rejected that responsibility and became callous and uncaring towards the struggles of my siblings. Steve did the same thing. I hate that I did that and I hate who it made me, so I also hate him. I hate him in a way not many people can hate him because it's deeply personal. HOWEVER, I also heavily empathize with him. He's an asshole, but I get it. It just doesn't make it okay. (Sidenote: Thank you UA-cam recommendations for recognizing my desire for another channel that does video essays)
I am sorry you went through what you did. I haven't seen the show or anything, but I think it's an interesting indicator of a good character that someone so fully sees themself in him, and relates to him, but hates him because of it
@@CaptainArthanos Lol, it's okay! That's what therapy is for and I'm much closer to my siblings now that we're older. But, I agree. I deeply envy how well the writers wrote the characters in this show.
@@kyndramb7050 That's an excellent point! That's probably another reason why people like me don't like him. It makes it harder for us to deny the negative traits we have in common with him.
The bent neck lady revelation made me actually pause and walk away. I've lost both my parents and I've never really been able to fully come to terms with their passing even though it was in 2013 (my dad, to gangrene) and 2015 (my mom, stage 4 cancer) it just hurt and left me feeling like I had an empty, gaping hole in me. The show actually ended up helping me talk to my therapist about the trauma of losing them so quickly and how much it hurts. So, I have a morosely dramatic horror show to thank for getting me to finally talk about how I was afraid to grieve.
Hi, I love reading what you wrote. I lost my grandfather 5-6 days after I finished this show. He had hypertension, and the night of his hemorrhage, he asked my mother to check his blood pressure. She was on her way out for dinner, so I volunteered to do it instead. He told us there's no need and got ready to sleep. He had the brain bleed at around 3 am, was taken to the mergency room and declared brain dead. We left him on life support for 4 more days till the rest of my mother's sibling could come. So much of the regret the Crain siblings shared, I saw in my mother and myself. Maybe he would've passed regardless of us checking his BP, or maybe he would've survived to live longer had we caught it before. Shirley's dialogue where she says, "I'm sorry I didn't answer the phone", and Nell replies, "But you did. So many times", is something that crosses my mind everytime the regret creeps him. I can't forgive me because my Nana can't forgive me, but maybe I can be a littles less harsh on myself. Art really is cool.
And I feel this is what art is for. Yes, just entertainment is important but the best peaces of art help you deal with your emotions by taking your hand and leading you through it. I always find it fascinating that we crave and need this. I didn't feel good watching the haunting of hill house it made me so sad but still I keep coming back to it. With that being said, thank you so much for sharing this personal info and - even though I always feel that phrase is so used up- I am very sorry for your loss
Not that you "missed" it because it wasn't a main point of the story so I don't think you would have gone into it anyways, but I really loved that Theo's monologue after Nell scares her and Shirley off the road was one of the most perfect descriptions of clinical depression I've ever heard. Nell clearly suffered from depression, and that monologue did an amazing job of using the literal wondering of "is there nothing left when we die?" as a parallel to how you feel when you suffer from depression. It's not just "sadness" like a lot of people who haven't experienced real depression think. It's an overwhelming apathy, a suffocating feeling of nothingness, that causes you to question why you are even alive. And as someone who's felt this kind of depression before, Theo's last line in the monologue: "That through fucking shame was so much better than that horrible empty nothing" is one of the most impactful lines in the show (shoutout to Kate Segal for her incredible acting as well). When you feel that level of depression, honestly you would even trade it for horrible feelings like deep sorrow, shame or guilt because as bad as those make you feel, they still feel better than the nothingness that comes with depression.
I’m glad somebody brought up the ‘I felt NOTHING’ line because it hit me in the gut HARD. Because I also feel too much all of the time and, during times that my thoughts go quiet and my heart stops racing, and I am facing nothingness, I know I need to reach out. But you can’t reach out until you start seeing SOMETHING to reach out to, you know? So, yeah, it was my favourite (and, simultaneously, least favourite) depiction of depression on screen.
@@fakenamebunchonumbers yeah. Shoutout to the writers for that one, they absolutely nailed it and Kate knocked it out of the park with her acting. It’s my favorite scene from the show by far.
F'n hell.... the whole plot with little Nell, "I was right here, none of you could see me." just broke me heart. Possibly because I'm also the youngest child, and while not as dramatically, I think it's a psychological battle we live with for the rest of our lives. No one listens to the littlest one. And our inputs are rarely taken seriously. Even growing into adulthood, forging our own lives and creating our own accomplishments, there's always that little voice from years of not being heard. I ended that episode in absolute tears.
And the worst part of this is that there are no winners. The oldest will have the most weight on their shoulders, they have to be responsible and an example for the younger ones. The middle one is often forgotten, they're not the cute little one or the more sensible older one. They're just there. The youngest one is never taken seriously, they're just the little dumb kid. But also, I'm the stupid pampered younger one so I could be talking out of my ass :D
Isn't this an absolute mood? I'm a youngest child too, and a really really younger at that because my siblings were on the older side of teenagehood when I was born, and you never shake that feeling off. Also, maybe is because I'm way younger than them, but we're never told shit about anything.
big relatable. my experience left me with a persistent worry that my feelings are an inconvenient burden, from everytime an activity got ruined because of my crying, like belonging can only ever be a sacrifice of oneself for others :/
I was never sure that Olivia consciously realized that her plan would kill her kids, because she seemed somewhat convinced that she and the twins needed to wake up. It reminded me of Inception, where Mal became unable to tell when she was in a dream and tried to wake herself up without realizing that she was already awake. I think Olivia sort of knew what she was doing with the rat poison but also believed that this was all just a dream, so it wouldn't actually harm the kids because it wasn't real. Remember, she believed that Hugh was the one who was going to kill the kids, when she chased after them to prevent Hugh from taking the kids away from the house. She thought Hugh was going to kill the kids and wanted to rescue them. Which might just make this more tragic...And the scene between Hugh and Olivia's ghost at the end reminded me of Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo, when Marlin tells Dory that he'd promised that nothing would ever happen to Nemo and Dory points out that that means nothing would ever happen to Nemo at all. It was a weird connection to make.
THATS WHY I WANT MORE FUCK BANOR MANOR OR WHATEVER LIKE WTF THAT SCENE IS ENOUGH TO MAKE THE VIEWERS WANT A FOLLOW UP! Now we have to assume that look is Olivia thinking, "This is what I wanted". Olivia didnt want stephen sadly, or the girls. She only wanted her twins......... She got Nell, and in exchange for Luke, she got Hugh. The house and Liv had to settle for Hugh. BUILD OFF OF THIS
Greg Kava I actually wrote in a previous comment that I interpreted that expression very differently. I felt like it was Liv struggling to keep up her end of the deal and possibly considering breaking it to take Stephen. I think that Nell shut the door on Olivia to save Steve one last time.
Leslie I agree, it looked like Olivia wanted to take Stephen too. I don’t think that was Olivia so much as a physical representation of the house itself. Like it was using Olivia to manipulate them.
Depressed 20 something I think it’s possible that she is completely the house by that point. The other thought I had was that maybe Olivia fought through for one final moment to shut the door to save Stephen. I think it makes more sense in the narrative for it to be Nelly though.
what broke me into tears the first time watching this was learning about Luke’s reason for counting from 1-7, and that, his family, knowing they’re there is keeping him grounded, and I’m literally tearing up thinking about this right now
Massive W to Mike for coming out and unambiguously saying “yes, this is a happy ending. Yes, it had to be that way. No, there’s no hidden darkness to it”. Which I love cuz I just know it made so many film theorists mad.
I sobbed like a freaking baby throughout Nell's monologue. It changed me as a person. My mom died a year ago while I was holding her hand and let me just tell you, I have never seen as realistic and raw and truth-to-life representation of how grief feels like as this show. This whole thing is a masterpiece of portraying the most difficult and complex emotions that exist. Beautiful thing and you did it absolute justice with your analysis. Thank you.
I’m the same. I lost my mum really suddenly almost two years ago now too, and hearing Nell’s line, “I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti,” always makes me have to pause and cry hard for a few minutes myself because it hurts that much. I can’t hate Steven, or any characters in this show, because their portrayal of grief and trauma is so realistically all encompassing despite their attempts to stifle it and store it away. It was a really cathartic show to watch.
I lost my dad June of the year that hill house came out. I expected to be scared when I first watched it not to gain a new perspective on grief and death. It’s so raw and beautiful and at the same time it’s almost cruel with how realistic it is with showing grief. Every time I hear nellie’s speech at the end I start crying, I don’t think any other show has done that for me since.
I dont thing Steve was the main protagonist. I never had the feeling anyone was the maincharacter because the story always puts someone different in the center.
For me, the house was the main character, I'd hazard a guess and say that it probably what they intended. Although each episode focused on different characters, it was always about how the house had affected them and how they dealt with the trauma caused by the house.
@@HannahwithaH - yes. In Harry Potter, said boy is the center of the story, taking him out would completely derail the plot. He is the character that is essential to the story being told. Hill House is the center, is beginning, and is the end of the story. You can take any of the characters out and the story being told doesn’t change; they are just there to experience the character of the House. They are different reactions to meeting an entity of absolute reality; skepticism, confusion, uncertainty, and acceptance in the Mother’s case. The characters were built around the House. The house stood for a hundred years and will stand for a hundred more. “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
@@HannahwithaH Definitely - it kinda reminds me of Star Trek where the Enterprise is quite a character of her own too. All the characters are linked to it the the show couldn't exist without it.
I didnt realize it has been 5 years since this show came out. I absolutely loved it when it came out and havent stopped thinking about it. But I forgot just how much this show *wrecked* me. Just watching these clips make me cry. Mike Flanagan's works are so impactful. I'd love to see a video essay on his new series The Fall of the House of Usher.
This is like the 5th time I watch this video and it's now that I realize what it means that in episode 6 everyone but Nell's corpse is in blue, whereas she's in red. In a video analysis by Hue Hues, he pointed out how blue (associated with Hugh) symbolized reality whereas red (associated with Olivia) symbolized the red door and fantasy. Therefore, while the dead Nell is trapped in the world of the red door (red funeral dress) , the rest of the family are still in reality (blue clothes). Another interesting thing to think about are the pink nightgowns Olivia and Nell wore when they died. It can be read not only as a visual connection between them, but also as a symbol of the threshold to the red room's world. Pink, as the lighter version of red (fantasy), is like the last step before falling into the abyss in multiple ways, no pun intended. And it's not just because the 2 women wore pink when they died, but also because Nell keeps wearing the pink dress after death while Olivia dons the red dressing gown. Olivia has completely succumbed to the fantasy of Hill House and become a manifestation of the red room. However, because Nell managed to regain sense right before she died and realized what was really happening, she didn't completely succumb to that lure. Therefore, she might be in a perpetual threshold between reality and fantasy that prevents her from becoming like Olivia's spirit and helps save her siblings. And since Hugh willingly sacrificed his life for his kids, his realistic mind (symbolized by his blue clothes), however broken by grief it became through the years, will also prevent him from becoming like Olivia. He's not crazy despite what he looks like to outsiders, he's fully aware that his mental Olivia is just that, a coping mechanism in his mind. He never let's go of his reality, just extends it to include the ghosts of Hill House.
@@Laura_Parenti He remains in the blue suit when he embraces Liv and Nell in the red room. If you mean the red/maroon/purpley jacket when he is in the middle of the custody battle with Janet, that may reflect that he is forced to accept the fantasy in order to protect his family and the Dudleys.
I swear, the tall man who shows up in Luke's episode scared the shit out of me. It's rare I'm gripped with such terror as I was watching him float through the hallways and into their room.
Thank you for listing the jump scare times in the description. Signed, an Autistic and easily startled viewer who only go through the whole show using the site Where's the Jump?
I cried during the last episode in probably one of the few times a TV show has made me legitimately bawl some gross, snotty tears. This review, watching it probably well over a year after finishing the show, made me bawl the same gross, snotty tears. I'm talking some lip-quivering, "I-want-to-vocally-scream" tears of sadness... I have to be up in a few hours...
I've watched this show three times now and I still can't stop the tears. Hugh's line about holding the door shut with both arms outstretched but having no arms left to hold his children tears at me. I think about this show all the time
This show was just unbelievable. I wish I could wipe my memory of it and watch it again for the first time. The horror elements are perfect the story being told is beautiful, tragic, haunting. I don’t think there will ever be a horror tv show as good as this ever again. Flanagan is a horror icon and the world is a better place with his work in it.
This show is maybe the most surprisingly emotional thing I've ever seen. I came for the scares, I stayed for the OMG I JUST WANT THEIR FAMILY TO BE TOGETHER AND HAPPY PLEASE GOD WHY
gotta disagree that the show was "mainly" about steven, he was the author of the book about their whole lives but much of the show was about the female characters
Yeah and saying that this adaptation is not like the first "feminism" one is kinda weird. This show is about family. The whole family is the main character! Not steven.
@@Cherry-bj7dd well, it isn't. Even if you disagree about steven being the main character, the first 'hill house' had a prominent theme of female empowerment, this one doesn't. Which is fine imo they're different stories, and it makes sense that a young father would see and care about different themes than a repressed housewife, but it's still noteworthy
Honestly sometimes I just watch this video when I need to cry. In the process of trying to get through grief, I return to this video, and it makes me cry every time.
the one frame where you talk about the witness marks and how the children rationalize what happened in the house around 48:00 mark, the text says it would be great to hear how theo rationalizes them: i think she doesnt say because shes a middle child, she's literally in the middle. for luke and nel the events were so real that they literally haunted them in physical form of the ghosts well into adulthood, and for steve and shirley they were something that their brains made up. the age order of the kids lines them up from most denying to most directly affected, and theo is smack down in the middle. she has her powers so she cant completely deny the existence of supernatural but she hasnt been directly affected by ghost stuff so she cant 100% confirm it either. she's bargaining with herself how much of it was real, if you will.
and as a tie-in to her career, she often lets other people voice their opinions and decides where the conversation needs to go based on that instead of bringing herself into it in the first place. She doesn't do much talking in the money scene until everyone else has refused it, and that's why she had to leave the room on a one-liner. Not so much making a decision on the morality of it, on other peoples' reactions, but something for herself, AFTER she understands how stubborn they're all gonna be about the fight
Like you, I think of Theo in the middle. I think she did believe in Luke and Nell’s experiences but I also think she forcibly closed her mind to venturing further down that path - like Steve and Shirl.
the final shot of Two Storms with Nell being left unseen and all alone had me bawling my eyes out like you would not believe. even now i'm starting to cry a little bit just seeing it again
It breaks my heart that so many of their last words to Nell are apologies. Cause that's what we all fear: having regrets, needing to make apologies to our loved ones when they pass. "What if that's the last thing you said to your [blank] before they died?" Wouldn't you be sorry? I'm not crying - YOU'RE crying!
Please do a video essay of Bly Manor, I would love to see the comparisons. Personally I believe Hill house was a story of loss in family while Bly manor is more of loss in love.
A lot of this adaptation of Haunting of Hill House comes across as poetry to me. From the dialogue to the cinematography, editing etc etc… it’s all poetry. And not all of it is good, not everyone will like it- but overall it just… moves you. It has a message that speaks to your soul. It’s a shame that Haunting of Hill House wasn’t nominated for any Emmys. Just a shame.
I've watched this show 3 times now and every time Nell says "... the rest is confetti" i just start crying. this show is a masterpiece of storytelling.
And I'm crying about Hill House again. (I have more to say, but when I try to put it in words I just wanna start crying again. I'm glad we're seeing multiple shows tackling the different ways childhood trauma manifests in adulthood (Umbrella Academy being the other, which I could also write tomes about, but probably *could* actually write it b/c I'm not holding back sobs).) Wonderful analysis. I was about to go rewatch except it's 0144 & that is the worst idea. Love this video! Great job
57:56 "go" 58:02 "don't" Nell says "go" to Luke in the rehap center after she dies and Joey flees. Nell says "don't" to Luke at the cemetery right before Olivia tried to pull him into the grave.
@@Ladyknightthebrave YEA we can see this happen with nell often enough its a pattern. Not only is this part her saying "go" and "dont" at the other times in the show as well, but she also experienced it at first in the red room, before she talks about the confetti she says bits and pieces of what she is about it say. Only when Shirley asks about it does she start the monologue Nell IS my FAVORITE (next to theo)
And Olivia says "Stay" as she tries to pull Luke into the grave. We get the conversation of the tea party while Luke is dying over and over again throughout the show and it is so clever and so heartbreaking once you realise.
Yeah I never saw Steven as the main character. They all feel like the main characters in different moments. But Steven was never my least favorite character either. I love them all honestly
The strongest feeling I got from this show as the message that we're all haunted by something, and to rob our ghosts of their power we have to face them. Only then can we start to recover from what hurts us. I'm a baby about certain kinds of horror, and this show initially scared me badly enough to cut into my sleep for a couple weeks. But once I was finished with it, I felt rewarded for making it through. The story is rich, and the ghosts aren't as scary by the end. Mostly I just want to give every one of these hurt characters a hug, because goddamn the actors are so good at making me believe these people are real.
I keep being astonished at how perfectly cast childhood Shirley is. She looks so much like the adult counterpart and was a very good actor compared to a lot of other child actors (including some of the others in the same series cough cough)
@@damaged.collateral the kid actor for Luke..... didn't look like him and was a terrible actor. kid Nellie wasn't great either, but at least she looked the part, and tbf she was the youngest.
N Violet mm excluding the scene with the tall man that reached under his bed, his performance came off a little weaker but i didn’t mind all that much; after all, he’s a child and could personally probably act circles around me lmao. those glasses they gave him really didn’t help with the optics at all, though.
@@damaged.collateral maybe the fact that luke and nell don’t look as similar to their adult counterparts as the other siblings do is deliberate and ties in with the idea in olivia’s head that the outside world and their futures have already dug their claws into them, whereas the twins can still be “saved”
@@katiefox734 I don't get it. Can you elaborate? How will that change the DNA? I don't mind that they don't look like their adult versions btw. It can be very tough to find such actors.
Storytime: I watch the whole series with my family. Every Saturday we would join in the living room and watch 1 or 2 episodes at a time, in the last months this has been the highlight of my week. When it came for the finale I was weeping. HARD. I was not expecting that reaction for me and neither did my family. When it finished, we turn on the lights and they just.. hug me. They let me cry my eyes out and stayed there with me with hugging me and letting me know without words that they were there and that it was okay.. which make me weeping 1000x more.. but in a good way. So just wanna say.. thank you. If it wasn't for your video I wouldn't had the bravery to watch it in the first place (I'm just a scary cat like you)
Mike Flanagan just used “Epitaph” by Merrit Malloy in ‘Midnight Club’-I know it must’ve been due to someone in the writers room seeing this video! The poem fit nicely into the context of the show, but I’ll always associate it with the confetti monologue from HoHH…
I could LITERALLY write a book about this version of The Haunting of Hill House. Re: Steven - he's not my favorite of the kids, but I think he's got a really great character arc. In the first episode, when Hugh whisks him out of the house, Hugh tells him to close his eyes. And when they're driving away from the house, Hugh is telling the kids not to look back and Steven is the ONLY ONE who does. Then, when they return at the end of the series, Hugh tells Steven to look at him to divert his attention from the Bowler Hat ghost. At every turn, Steven is being told to look away from the horrors happening around him, to act like they don't exist. And he literally learned it from his dad. So the fact that he wrote the book at all is strikingly brave of him - considering how everyone reacted, it was the one time he actually tried to LOOK back at what happened because he's being told not to look back, but he knows it's unresolved. And then, once he knows the truth from Hugh, and has come to peace with the house, he can leave this time WITHOUT looking back because he's finally put all the ghosts of Hill House behind him for good. Also re: the proto-feminist themes of the original book - I have some, ahem, unpopular opinions. As much as I'm here for the themes of repressed femininity, I don't think a "faithful" adaptation of Jackson's book would have really worked in the modern day, just because the portrayals of those themes as they were depicted in the original text are fairly outdated in terms of moder feminist discourse. BUT I'd argue that the series still maintains the same collection of themes and clearly understands the book incredibly well. Book!Eleanor isn't just representative of repressed 1950s femininity, but she's also the anxious outcome of a lifetime of abuse at the hands of her late mother and her sister. Both are shown to have been extremely verbally and emotionally abusive to her (and potentially physically in the case of her mother.) So she is so deeply insecure and desperate for real love but also terrified whenever any affection is shown to her. Throughout the book, she's dealing with the trauma of her abusive upbringing, and projecting her skewed expectations and assumptions onto the other characters. She's simultaneously desperate for the approval and attention of Theo and Dr. Montague and Luke, but terrified that any attention they give her is simply "mocking" her or insincere - hence, why she's always so anxious to speak and always feels unseen by the others. And in the moments that she is assured of their sincerity, she's suddenly jealous of their relationships with one another and terrified that they'll abandon her. Book!Eleanor ends up totally enamoured with the house because it's mind games are a substitute for the psychological abuse of her late mother. It's been normalized for her, which is why everyone else is scared of what happens in the house, while Eleanor EMBRACES it. It's her "home" because her only measurement of "home" is a constant turmoil of familial abuse. Everyone else can see it, except for Eleanor, to the point that she believes that when they're sending her away from the house for her safety, they're ACTUALLY doing it because they hate her. Her world-view has become so warped by her own trauma that she ends up self-destructing and killing herself because she literally cannot believe that these people care for her. And I think Flanagan does an INCREDIBLE job at conveying all of those themes - the way that family trauma makes people self-destruct, the complicated nature of abusive and erratic parents and their children's relationships with them, the nature of mental illness, Nell's inability to be seen or heard because of her own experiences as well as her feelings of isolation even when she's with people who DO love her, the ways that we let each other down even when we don't mean to, the ways that people ignore these problems until it's too late, and that sometimes trauma can completely consume families (like that more-bitter-than-sweet moment with the Dudleys, where their inability to move beyond their trauma means that the house manages to take them all.) And then he gives Nell a cathartic ending. She's not just consumed by the house and her own trauma like she is at the end of book, but she gets to come to peace with the fact that her siblings DID care for her as she cared for them, even if they couldn't always give each other what they needed. And that it's possible for people to heal from their traumas and move forward with their lives. We've seen a million tragic horror stories where people are destroyed by their traumas, particularly in the cycles of family traumas. So I deeply admire Flanagan for understanding the source material, while giving those people who have been through trauma hope that they aren't just doomed to self-destruct, but that they have the ability to heal and grow. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
One of my favorite aspects of the adaptation is the children’s psychic power. Obviously Theo’s is the strongest, but they ALL have it. Olivia says only the women have it but her sons do, the siblings say it’s a “twin thing” to account for Nell and Luke’s bond, but again it’s all of them. And then there’s Hugh, the only member of the family who truly doesn’t, but is after Olivia’s death so open to the house and to his uncanny children who won’t even talk to him. It’s so touching and heartbreaking, all of it. Also, Victoria Pedretti should have gotten an Emmy nomination for playing Nell. The noises she makes throughout the show, moans and whimpers while she clamps her mouth closed in an attempt to not truly cry, if you’ve ever witnessed someone in extreme grief, losing a loved one or having been betrayed by someone they truly trusted, that’s the sound you hear. Also, in the Luke episode, when he’s out on the streets everyone sees him and wrongly assumes he’s using opioids again. But he is in DTs, not for drugs but for Nell, literally the other half of his soul. It’s heart wrenching. The only moment that made me sob more than Nell’s death - the house making her believe she was with Arthur again - was the moment with Mr. Dudley carrying his dying wife to the house so she can be with her babies for eternity. That moment absolutely made me lose it.
I binged all of The Haunting of Hill House during over like two days in my senior year of college. I was up all day and all night, and when my roommate left to do janitorial duty on campus at 4AM she told me that if I was still awake when she got home at 7, she would physically rip the TV off the wall. I sobbed so hard during the ending that i gave myself a sleep-deprivation migraine and crawled into bed as my roommate walked through the door. It was the best night of my senior year.
I disagree that Steve was the center of the show. I would say that Olivia was. She was the heart of the family, kids' trauma revolves mainly around her. Olivia's death broke the family and their lives. Edit: Thanks for all the likes! On my third rewatch of the series I think now I understand why we start and end with Steve: as one of the replies mentioned, it's partly because the series go from eldest to youngest sibling. But also I think we start with the most skeptical sibling so that as Steve discovers that ghosts are real most people in the audience (who are, i believe, in our days and age don't really believe in ghosts) can discover in with him. So the series just makes a stronger connection with audience and hooks us up from the very beginning. But i still do not believe that Steve is the main protagonist.
WaterResistance Maybe not the center, but he was arguably presented as the overall protagonist, with his point of view/character development framing the beginning and end of the story.
I felt the center of the show was Nell and Olivia. Nell was the protagonist that saved her siblings, she held the family together and the story in the adult timeline is entirely based around her death and her actions as a ghost. Olivia is just as important because her death is what caused the characters trauma. She also worked as an antagonist to the show along side Poppy and was responsible for killing Nell. Steven had the first episode and was a narrator, he in the grand scheme of things probably contributed the least to the overall plot and progression of the story. The next most important character to the story would probably have to be Hugh or Theo.
Thank you..... I felt that was a personal reach cause I've literally heard no one turn this into a gender vs gender thing nor have I heard anyone say Steve was the center of the show...... I felt it was a family thing with a lot of the focus on Neil........But mainly it was about the whole family.
This is genuinely one of the only video essays I’ve seen on UA-cam that’s actually substantive and not just someone talking a lot and saying very little.
hey! i came back to this essay because i just finished watching the midnight club and i KNOW i heard the epitaph before somewhere and i remembered you! you make such brilliant videos that i never skipped a single ad bcs u deserve so much and more. thank you for making these, they are so worth the hours. oh, and may i suggest another netflix series? it's a german drama called dark and it spans for 3 seasons and is just *chef's kiss*. i think you'll like it. more power to you queen 💖
I never noticed Nells face as the red Room close. I was too busy watching Olivia staring discontentedly back at me. Would love to know what she was thinking
Olivia’s face to me reads as dissatisfied. I feel she didn’t want to make the deal to give her kids up with Hugh so she stared Steven down like “go before I change my mind” she hid it from Hugh as they embraced but she wanted her kids there
As someone who was traumatized by the Nightmare before Christmas as a child, I felt that intro in my bones. Thanks for the continuous amount of amazing content,
YES. Also. This is incredibly stupid but. Did anyone else get traumatized by a live action musical home VHS from Disney set in Disney World? Specifically, it was the singing trees from the haunted mansion. Those fucking trees looked like the demon love child of Cthulhu, a Klan member, & cheap crepe ribbon. Just hearing the music that they sang would send me into a fit of terror. WTF Disney. But mostly WTF to my mom who never ceased to be entertained at my panic when she teased me about it. Like, sneaking to behind me & singing that song as I jumped 10 feat in the air and started screaming & crying at her. >:|
That "I was here the whole time" scene had me welling up even in this video. Well over a year after watching this show. Holy crap this show did a number on my feels, wasn't expecting such a fast re-surfacing of that 😭
I had no idea people disliked Steven lol. I think he’s a solid character. He grows as a person. He does some shitty things, but all the characters do. They’re all deeply human.
So this became one of my favorite shows the instant I started watching it, and as such I've seen a lot of UA-cam videos of it. Steven is definitely hated. He gets the most hate, probably as much as even Shirley, which is wild to me.
He treated his dad like garbage...If he was in our family,he would have been in therapy so quick his head would have fallen off..everyone suffered trauma,but his obnoxiousness was a turn offf
You are the most underrated youtuber I know. You put so much gorgeous work into your videos, and every minute is a delight. I got so many chills watching this. I really hope you keep making videos and people appreciate you more as time goes on. Thanks for doing what you do.
@@Ladyknightthebrave true, this is one of the best vidoe essays i ve ever seen and trust me i ve seen a lot, the haunting of hill house is very underrated. keep up the good work, and thank you for appreciating this magnificient show
arnemyggen Did she?!? Amazing! Sounds like something he would do. I’ve been stalking him for months waiting for a release date announcement. I believe many of us desperately need the distraction.
When you credited Victoria Pedretti with acting chops in the scene of her husband's death I remembered where I knew her from. She plays the "love" interest in the second season of "You" and her acting mesmerized me from the first second she was on screen. She's able to convey real emotion with just a look or a word... She's going places.
[SPOILER FOR SEASON TWO OF “YOU”] The scene where love was confessing to Joe that she killed Delilah, and that she’s actually just as obsessed as him was absolutely amazing. It gives me chills every time I watch it
Wait... so was your username a lie this entire time?
It was aspirational. Also I laughed for like 5 minutes at this comment.
Ladyknightthebrave
Thanks for the pin! 👈😎👈
I think it was very brave for you to watch things knowing they will scare you. [Insert that harry potter quote.]
@@Ladyknightthebrave This is kinda random, but is your username a play on "Nott the Brave"?
@@Ladyknightthebrave Just like every guy whose username it's a pun about the size of their you know what... aspirational!
"TRAUMA ISN'T A CONTEST, AND THERE'S NO WINNER" took me years to accept that. BE KIND TO YOURSELVES, EVERYBODY.
@Cata CF, this is the hardest truth all of us have to learn. I've sat on my therapist's couch agonizing over how I just can't pity myself because so many other people have it so much worse. And he told me that "Just because others are hurting, doesn't mean you're not hurting too"
I try to be kind to myself - it's hard to do but I try to remember that my traumas and sufferings are not negated just because someone else has what-in-my-mind-is-worse trauma.
@@jsandbox2068 your concerns and pain are valid; your happiness and peace are valid; YOU are valid. :)
Everyone experiences pain and loss sooner or later. Remember that for others too. We have all loved and lost.
That others experience trauma isn't a contest. It's hope that we can heal and have a life that goes on. It's just a matter of figuring out what you need to do it yourself.
I found Nell's death cathartic. Sometimes a piece of you has to die with whatever else you let go of.
For many of us who experience loss for the first time that piece is some form of innocence.
It's tragic but we can find wisdom and maturity as we learn to live again.
Sorry for the word vomit. Going through alot lately and pondering alot.
@@SoulDevoured Bruh no need to apologize for the 'word vomit'. I'm sitting here reading it and crying cuz it cuts so deep. You spoke truth.
@@SoulDevoured I hope you're doing okay
“Honey, We Traumatized the Kids” i’m terrible for laughing
Well I meant it as a joke so thank you for laughing.
Ladyknightthebrave i love it, thank you! excellent work as always
I am personally LIVING for “maybe the real friends we made were the traumas along the way”
Like my LIFE in a shitpost right there
Your not alone
Sounda like my childhood
Mike Flanagan just posted on his new tumblr account that he watched this video, and borrowed the poem you referenced for use in Midnight Club. Mike Flanagan watched and enjoyed your video. If you didn't already know, I had to come and tell you, because I think I'd die of joy in your situation.
She did an interview with him that was really good, might have only been on Patreon. He was pretty effusive in his praise for her and her videos.
@@Argo.nautica Oh that's awesome! I had no idea.
What makes the “None of you could see me.” Line more heartbreaking is that it was true for adult Nell while she was alive. None of her siblings really took time out to be concerned about her after her husband’s passing or thought about her mental health issues. When she calls them they all ignore her. Also what Hugh says in Two Storms about her always asking “Santa” for gifts for her siblings but never herself. He also said as she got older she still sent him letters and always talked about how her siblings were doing never herself. Olivia encouraged Nell’s selflessness as a child, but as I saw someone say once, Nell took that as having no self. She never looked out for herself but did for others. It’s a crime this show didn’t get any Emmy nominations, but it’s a crime against humanity especially that Victoria Pedretti didn’t get one.
"I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That's all; the rest is confetti."
This quote makes me cry every time.
Same! I cannot watch that bit without ugly crying
ZaraBee28 I can’t cry unless it’s ugly crying.
I just teared up from that quote at the end of this video and I don’t really know why tbh. I don’t tear up easily. Maybe it was just how intense Victoria Pedretti delivered the line
Yes, also when it showed up in Bly Manor I cried again
Same and when Hannah nearly says it in bly manor :(
I think one important little thing people miss Is Luke's seven keeps you safe. At the very end when hes by the cake with everyone around him there are seven people there. I thought that was a very well thought out moment
omg
And the seven steps program 😔💕
stopp i don’t want to cry for the 10th time
Shirley, Theo, Leigh, Kevin, Trish, me, and you. It has to be 7, otherwise it won't work.
@@KanraLovesHumansIt’s a 12 step program though
What I found really sad about Nell’s ending was that, presumably, she would never be reunited with her husband in the afterlife. She gets to be reunited with her parents and that’s nice(-ish), but she was just so devastated by his loss that I can’t really be happy about her being trapped in hill house for all eternity. And plus it’s not even like her mom’s ghost reverted back to her pre-insanity personality, this is still the lady who straight up murdered her
i cant let go of this either
Me neither. Ultimately, Nell doesn't actually get a happy or even remotely bittersweet ending. She's trapped in a house that terrified her, with her father (which is okay, I guess) and her mother whose been completely devoured by the darkness of the house and is the reason she died and cannot be with her husband again. It's just miserable.
Yes!
@breezey357 this is true but in the end she does talk about forgiveness so you could also think that in her afterlife she does forgive her mother.
Eventually the house will crumble or be destroyed. Wonder what happens after that.
You can’t understand Shirley or Steven until you’ve been the older sibling who HAS to hold it all together while processing your own trauma. Cause if you look away too long who knows what trouble the younger ones will get into. Which they do cause they took their eyes off them.
Other thing from "The Twin Thing": The reason Nell has a bruise on her face in the morgue is because Luke got beat up.
that whole episode is brilliant. I didn't get the twin thing at first, I thought Luke was going to a withdrawal of sort (feeling cold and joint pain is common in heroin withdrawal).
@@valentinamariamanieri3988 But he was 90 days clean so that couldn’t have been possible. I thought the whole episode it was bc Nell was dead
@@thepyrolez I just didn't make the connection. But that shows how brilliant this series is.
@@thepyrolez dont forget the fact that luke born 90 seconds earlier
@@boroboro462 Yeah I noticed that too
The Bent neck lady RUINED me. I still can't stop thinking about it and it feels like I was forever ago that I watched it
Preach. I woke up once in my teens with a hag woman in a tattered wedding dress floating above me just like the Bent Neck Lady in the show. That scene brought the memory back and its still haunting me
I am the same way.
I'm a 34 year old mother of 2 and that scared the shit out of me and still does.
That was such great writing but absolutely terrified me.
oh absolutely, that's my favorite episode (and i dont usually have favorite episodes of shows)
@@Payne3991 that sounds fucking terrifying
Nothing like realizing you were your own ghost all the time...
Watching it again made me realize that the reason why Luke was able to finally get clean was because Nell stopped taking her medication. She sacrificed her mental health for his recovery. 😭
Sometimes I think people conflate hating a character with being frustrated with that character. Steven is very frustrating, but he’s also understandable and sympathetic.
Steve gets a bad rap. He definitely said some douchey things (or maybe just with lack of consideration for others' feelings). This didn't put me off too much, considering Theo was often REALLY mean-spirited but we all love her.
Steve was tragic because his denial made him so isolated and alone. His psychosomatic NEED to have an explanation for everything and to only have to believe in the "real" and tangible made him more vulnerable to the house than even Nellie herself. Hugh even told him that (more-or-less). It was nuts to me that Steve walked in and immediately started seeing the ghosts and horrors for what they were - without the pleasant facade. I think that's huge. The house knew it couldn't "fool" or gaslight him because he had done that to himself his whole life. He successfully created a life where he changed his childhood realities and could actually somewhat live normally. It was always going to be alone, but he would survive. The house had to give him its ugly reality and in a twisted way it helped him come to terms with his own.
A lot of my frustration with Steven stemmed from that know-it-all attitude that older siblings tend to have to their younger ones. It's very frustrating when as a younger sibling, you make a valid and rational point or you try to reach out in a time of emotional turmoil and you get dismissed as being immature or too young to know what you're talking about.
It's that certain kind of above-it-all attitude that really bothers people, myself included.
The point at which he becomes tolerable is when he starts becoming vulnerable and he has some humility when he realises that Nell and his father weren't just being crazy.
My gripe is you can’t say you care about others and their mental health and then publish a book which was very much in his power not to publish that would harm those others greatly … just a whole dick I do not care for him even a tiny bit … it was only cathartic for him to be proven wrong and that was it
I will never forget the end of the 5th episode as long as I live. The bent neck lady revelation was absolutely H O R R I F Y I N G
agreed. I think i realised maybe half a second before the reveal and shouted at the TV - "Oh Jesus, its her."
I swear it scarred me! I didnt sleep well for 2 days lmao
Ikr! Episode 5 was amazing for this season and the new season.
IMO, this is one of the finest TV eps in history in regards to servicing a story. Heartbreaking...
I had a sort of feeling that it was her.. Wenever Nell sees the Bent Neck Lady floating over her, you can hear the BNL saying "no no no no no no", as if the BNL was in denial of something, or didn't want to be there, traumatizing this child.
Also, since there was this seemingly undeniable fact that Nellie killed herself, it made sense to think that maybe her neck snapped while she hung herself.
Still, that scene where we find out that it really is her was definitely heart wrenching. I cried HARD
that "I was right here the entire time, no one could see me" line is heartbreaking, that scene brings tears to my eyes...both actresses playing Nell delivered an incredible performance, and by the end of the show I didn't feel scared of the Bent-neck Lady, I just felt sorry for Nell.
Exactly, and I think during, and then after her funeral, she became more active because she wanted her siblings to quit fighting. She's in the background the night before the funeral, then she switches off the lights to talk to her dad, and then shoves her body and casket off of the stand right in the middle of the fight. And so on and so forth.
I think it speaks volumes that out of the children, she was arguably the one with the most (continuous) trauma from the house, yet Nell was still able to bear the brunt of the red room.
Oh my god i think about this line so much at random times of the day
The “You go on without me” “how could we?” Breaks me harder. It might sound ridiculous but as I’m writing it I’m tearing up 💀😹
This was the best analysis I have ever seen
I'd watched this show over a year ago and didn't remember most of it but this line genuinely got me tearing up a LOT
That was a wonderful video essay, thanks so much. I just finished this show and wanted to live in it more and discuss it with someone and this really did that for me.
It really is the kind of show that stays with you and makes you want to live in it with other people, that’s why I return to videos like this one again and again - there’s something more you can get hearing someone else discuss the show rather than just watching it alone again…
im so glad you enjoyed this show too(:😊
hello??? was not expecting to see you here
My husband and I spend hours discussing it like multiple times a month since it came out. It's had such a profound impact on us. This video is a pretty good way to scratch the itch if you don't have a discussion partner around.
Garrett, my boy!! Miss your content. You're such a ray of sunshine.
Okay but can we talk about how Shirley's guilt and grief drive her to try to patch things up and make them be Okay when they can't be, and how she *absolutely* takes after Hugh in that way? When she says, "I'm gonna fix you," an echo of Hugh's "I can fix this", and you realize that she's desperately trying to undo her failures and taking *way* too much on for herself and ultimately making everything worse just like Hugh did, it's *gutting.*
It's the only thing that redeems her in my eyes. I couldn't stand Shirley compared to every other kid, even Steven, because of her hypocrisy and controlling personality which to me is the most annoying way any of them dealt with their trauma. However when you see her becoming Hugh in the way she has to fix everything, it makes the controlling bits a lot easier to swallow.
@@evangelionl0vr857 As someone who struggles heavily with control and anger issues, and who has a really bad habit of trying to Fix things with dramatic gestures to alleviate guilt, yeah, Shirley hits home for me. She's just as scared as the rest of them.
@@koboldcatgirl I have anger issues too, and always try to fix things, but unlike Shirley, I internalize all of it and where she lashes out at others, I just lash out at myself lol. I related to Steven a lot, but that was older brother stuff and him thinking he was the logical, clear headed one.
@@evangelionl0vr857 Honestly, we lash out at ourselves, too, just in an even less helpful way that doesn't really let us process what we need to get better about. A man in the corner raises his glass to us now and again, is all. x3
@@koboldcatgirlyes, it seemed like Steve turned himself into an outsider and Shir had to be the big sis of them so she would never lose control again
Can we acknowledge how amazing the kid actors were in this? It was honestly stunning
I know, I find it very rare to have a show where every child actor is amazing and doesn't take me out of the experience, especially when they're so young
I think all except the eldest son. I feel that his dialogue was cheesy and out dated. His delivery was cold and unnatural. His scenes made me cringe because it almost felt like a disconnected counselor trying to fake empathy towards a student.
@@FluoxetinaBelcher but I think part of that was just his character, as he was in deep denial about everything that happened while he was in hill house. However, I do agree that he didn't stand out like the other kids did.
I agree, I loved watching all of them act. And they were sooo cute.
@@icon6200 oh I was referring the child Ethan during the "tree house" scene and when he was giving little Luke the "big brother school" speech.
alternate reading:
all the Crain females had gifts or were "sensitive". the mother Olivia mentioned that their grandmother too was the same. Olivia herself had "deja-vus", but they were more like flashbacks, & dream /waking visions.
following her mother, Shirley's ability was also linked to the subconcious. she only had premonitions in her sleep, through sleeptalking. but my guess is that whatever latent abilities she had, she suppressed them as a way to "fix" it. which explains her career choice of "fixing" the effects of death. something powerful that she can control & contain.
Theo's power was the most obvious, which helped her get to Truth. this also shaped her professional pursuit as a child psychologist, to help them by seeing the truth behind their traumas.
Nell was actually the most powerful of the Crain women. her gift was Clarity. she claimed the house was "loud" when they first moved in, before anything started happening.
in her letters to Santa as a child, she was able to dictate all the things her siblings needed, even the stuff her parents were not aware of.
the house knew this from day one and reprogrammed her the night of the storm where she was unseen by the rest of her family. it successfully set the tone for her life - to dull her clarity. society, her family, prescriptive drugs did the rest.
why is she the most powerful? because as she hanged from the noose, her death was the biggest moment of clarity for her. it was like waking up, as her mother put it.
she was so powerful that at full clarity, she was able to go back psionically to try to warn herself. this was a feat she managed to do stretching the fabric of space and time. that was the (full?) magnitude of her power, and the house wanted it the moment it saw her.
Wow this is such a great comment thank you! I never noticed!
I would say the twin thing also relates to being "sensitive" considering it allows them to feel things that would be impossible without something supernatural going on.
This. Comment. Thank you.
I thought the same.
I think Steve has powers too. He was the only one who was to enter the Red Room's version of Luke. No other sibling could do that, I think?
@@saya1720_ I agree! Steve also saw ghosts in the house (like the man fixing the clock).
And I also think Luke had "gifts" because of the "twin thing" and he was able to see/hear/feel paranormal stuff too... So I think all kids were "sensitive" not just the woman
I really like that theory, it seems like one more subtext to explore in this rats maze of a show. The issue that always struck me about Nell was the fact she was seeing the BNL over her whole life, EXCEPT when she was dating and then married to Arthur. It was only after his death that she saw BNL again. It was as if Destiny had been interrupted by Arthur’s presence, and could only be righted by his death. I’m not saying the House killed Arthur, but it’s interesting that her fate seems to have changed when he was around.
A really tragic detail about Nell’s ghost’s costume design in the final episode is the necklace. Because it was the noose in disguise. Shackling her to Hill House. Oof
“i loved you completely, and you loved me the same, that’s all. the rest is confetti” makes me cry EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. including the end of this video so thanks for that.
Also Olivia's eyes in that last scene sent literal shivers down my spine. Carla Gugino did a phenomenal job.
YUP, I was just focusing on Nell because she makes me sad but Carla Gugino is a tour de force in this show
@@Ladyknightthebrave completely agree. Also I have such a nostalgic soft spot for the first Spy Kids film so that just added this new later of unease at seeing her slow descent unfold in the show. I know that's not something everyone can relate to but it definitely affected my viewing experience.
I also was a big fan of spy kids when I was younger, I'll always remember Gugino for that roll :)
I didn’t realise but I just wrote almost the exact same comment. Great minds I guess 😂
I loved that, too. She looks...hungry. Unhappy.
Does anyone else think that while Nell looks devastated as she hugs Hugh, Olivia just stares straight at Steven and looks...hungry.
Nell looks sad at first but then smiles as they hug. I think it's because that despite saving and uniting all of her siblings, she couldn't save her dad. She then realizes that even though he's dead, they'll get to be together forever. As for Olivia, she has a slight smile on her face right before she stares at Steven as the door closes. I think she's happy to be with Hugh again, but at the cost of the rest of her children, who she'll have to wait even longer for until they can all finally be together.
@@AtlantisTheLostEmpire That's the thing though. The remainder of the Craine siblings would have to die in the house in order for them to be together. I do think the mom will leave her children alone now that she has Hough but her staring at Steve seemed very longingly, probably trying to look at him one last time with him seeing her again. Plus I highly doubt any of the remaining siblings would go back to die in that house. The only one I can possibly see doing that is Luke but who knows what life had left for him in the future, hopefully something good.
Holy shit as if it wasn’t troubling enough. Thanks for the detail, I didn’t need to sleep tonight!!
She didn't want to let any of her children leave, and I think she knew that Steve would be the most vulnerable one to pick apart and keep there. Ever since that last night at Hill House all he had wanted to know was what really happened to make his mom do what she did, and there's so much trauma to play with in their little dream illusions that it probably does sort of feel like a hungry predator letting their next meal walk free. The dead look in her eyes is pretty scary.
When Nell is describing how time is nonlinear, I thought back to the storms, and it's a stretch, I know, but when Nell couldn't be found during the storm in their childhood, i couldn't help but think that the two timelines were occuring at the same time. they couldn't find nell because she was already dead during the second storm. You can't be seen if you dont exist anymore. That whole episode broke my heart lol
For some reason I never thought of Steven as the main character, but I don’t hate him honestly, none of them are bad characters or people
I’ll be honest, Steven made me the most mad, but by the end I felt the most bad for him. His wife wanted kids, but he let her live on with the notion that it was HER FAULT they couldn’t conceive. But once you get to those final (powerful) scenes of him and his father, it all comes together. He thought his mom was mentally ill (which she most likely was, but it was heightened with the house) and he thought his dad killed his mom. He didn’t think that he could be okay with putting a child into the world, that may inherit his family’s craziness or even subject them to the same trauma if he turned out like either one of his parents.
@@savanna9707 Just curious, could I know what things did you get mad at him for?
@@emiloenix Probably because he let her live on with the notion that it was HER FAULT they couldn't conceive. Not to put words in someones mouth, but that's probably my guess.
@@slsthewriter1299 that's almost near the end of the show though, I'm mostly referring to throughout the story
@@emiloenix …I was quoting the original commenter. I personally never got mad at him, he just always annoyed me by being a tad bit condescending with the woman in the first episode.
WTF I DIDN’T EVEN REALIZE THATS WHAT WAS HAPPENING DURING LUKE’S EPISODE. I thought he was cold due to exposure to the elements but it makes SO MUCH SENSE. Damn. That’s sad.
Isn't it just. Makes me sad to this day
Absolutely! I totally thought it was just exposure. Now I have to go and watch it yet again!
yeah.. i guessed his body getting cold and stiff..but it never striked me, the pain in his neck was somehow related to Nell hanging herself
I thought it was a withdrawal symptom the first time I saw it. Then I thought it was just cold outside I think I realized the twin thing on my 5th viewing of the series. lol
@@atreestump @atreestump his arc was just so upsetting because of the "twin thing" that makes him feel more human than just an "addict". Which im assuming that's what they were going for.
Like, i do wish there was a mix of him actually being an addict and him
Being just being a good heart. People can be both! Like, drugs very much change who you are
Agabkf
That red room scene was perfect. Nells monologue is so good. And her forgiving her siblings really hit a chord with me. Often when someone commits suicide people around them feel guilty for not somehow preventing it. Nell was able to save them from that guilt, and I think without the guilt the house didnt really have an emotion to feed on any more. Thus by saving her siblings from their guilt she saved them from the house.
What gut-punched me was the "I'm sorry I didn't answer the phone." "But you did. So many times." Often when we lose someone we get SO hung up on the last interaction, as if that was what counted the most, because it was the end, but that isn't true at all. We never, or rather, rarely know when the end comes, and to deny ourselves anger or fear or even selfishness in the hope of creating a perfect end is unrealistic and in a way cruel. The last thing we say to each other is just that, the last. And that doesn't erase all that's been said and done before, and those things don't count less just because they weren't the last.
I never realized that Luke was feeling Nell’s death all through that episode. Great catch.
We all remember the iconic line
"If you upsetti...
have some confetti."
....that is so funny it makes me angry
-xo, Pedretti~
@@Ladyknightthebrave but did you think Steven should have asked his siblings permission to published the book because he never hear their side of the story
I'm sooooo glad Flanagan didn't go with the red room twist ending. I mean it's basically the exact same ending as Inception. And it didn't even work in that movie, it was a cheap way of making Christopher Nolan look smart, that just left most people without a clue what Nolan was trying to say? Leaving them all in the red room and sending the message that resolution to trauma and conflict only happens in our delusions--that would've seriously tarnished the message of the show.
I liked the ending in Inception, but I would hated that for this show.
I mean Christopher Nolan is pretty clever tho
It's so nice to see this. I am so sick of hearing people bash on the last episode. Maybe a lot of the watchers aren't people that have been through trauma or addiction, and so they don't get it, but for once it's nice to see suffering characters get to be happy, for their to be actual 'sweet' in the 'bittersweet.' This nihilism trend has got to stop. Real life is sad enough.
You didn't understand Inception if you thought that the ending was cheap. You can figure it out since they specifically say that you can't use someone's else token, it has to be your own. The spinner is Mal's, Cobb's is his wedding ring which he still wears in the dreams because Mal is still alive there, the spinner is just to specifically show you his hands. Fischer and Mal aren't the only ones going through inception, Cobb and the Viewers also go through it, it's a 4-way Inception with only 2 taking, or 3 in the case of some viewers who didn't understand the movie and then dare to call Nolan stupid. Plus that's not even the main point or theme, there's so much more to Inception than just the ending, which not everyone needs to understand since what it makes you feel should be the main point, but I draw a line when I see people disrespecting one of the only creative directors that comes up with original movies instead of making yet another remake.
@@malsummers6515 Cobb's totem isn't his wedding ring. A totem is something that you have in both realities to test them against each other, but Cobb only has his wedding ring in one. The wedding ring is a visual indicator for the audience, not a totem for the character (much like the Red and Blue markers in Tenet). Inception doesn't say you can't use someone else's totem. It says you shouldn't because then you would be using an item that someone else knows the secret to. But there's no one alive apart from Cobb that knows the secret of his totem, so it's okay for him to use it. The point of the top is to try out inception on the audience in the exact same way Cobb tried out inception on Mal. But I agree with all of your other points.
These are my favorite things about the show:
1) When Steve sees Nell's ghost in ep. 1, she's wearing the same outfit she wore when she confronted him at the book reading (the last time Steve saw her alive). When Luke sees Nell's ghost after she died, she's wearing the same outfit she wore when she bought drugs for him (the last time Luke saw her alive). And the jumpscare in ep. 8? She was wearing her wedding dress (from what I could tell) which was what she was wearing the last time Theo and Shirley saw her alive together.
2) It takes Luke seven steps to get from his bed to Nell's
3) Each time Luke saw Nell's ghost, she said "go" and "don't" which is what young Nell told him in his near-death red room vision.
4) Literally all of ep. 6
5) How the two beds in Luke's (I know, Luke again) vision turned into one
6) That the Dudleys gave up their religion and belief of Heaven and God to stay in the house with Abigail.
7) All the new things and foreshadowing you notice the second, third, fifth time watching it
The seven steps from Luke to Nell's bed hits hard, I noticed it too.
Definitely on number 7. Like the first scene of Luke's episode foreshadows Abigail by talking about a little girl dead that you see everywhere. Luke saw her everywhere alright; especially in someone like Joey. There's also a scene where Steven talks about how bad water damage can be long before we know about the black mold. And when Nell is about to die, she sees what would have been one of her last sites if her mother killed her: the tea party with all the right participants. It even happens at approximately the same time she would have died as a child. After all, while we don't know what time that incident happened at, we know it was 3 hours before Hugh called 911, and so if it was around 4 am when they got to the hotel and he drove back...well it isn't unreasonable to say the amount of light we see might make it 6 or 7. Another great bit both of foreshadow and interest is Theo talking about walls: how Mr. Hill literally died was walling himself in to protect himself from fear and guilt. I could write a whole essay on that guy and what he means to each character, Luke in particular.
@@rabbitsintheattic9889 i have seen the show twice but did not notice that!
@@rabbitsintheattic9889 Just finished this amazing show for the first time and need rewatch, but I think when Luke finally is strong enough to view Nell in the casket, there are 7 rows of chairs that he walks past to finally get to her.
@@aerieleah533 Can you go more into detail on how William Hill affected each of the characters?
This series was like a character study in human grief. Shirley has her moments but the scene where she’s pulling the organs out of Nell and she says “ I’m elbow deep in our sisters body cavity and you have to get two grown men to an airport, get it done” I had so much respect for her cause her and Theo get shit done.
I feel like Shirley got the short end of the stick writing wise - the cheating was a pretty uninspired ghost imo, and I found her sleep-talking interesting, it seemed to hint that she had powers too, but we never see more of that. I understand she might've suppressed her power but I think her character needed more depth
I feel like the series ended without answering all my questions. So many characters were left without given the depth they needed. What about poppy? The girl who owned the tea set before nell got it? The man who literally walled himself out of fear and guilt? Was he the same guy who was haunting Luke? And also we need more depth and info about their powers, not just theo, and the reason behind those powers. Why was the storm stronger in their place? Why was the house haunted? Was it "innate" since the beginning of its construction? Or was it because of what mr hill did? What did mr hill do? Why was steve such a dickhead?
Okay that last one was a joke
@@Elle-ho3uu They solve problems like these in the sequel
@@Elle-ho3uu Some of these questions don't need answers. The powers don't need answers, the storm neither. We didn't need it because the serie focus on the tragedy of Hill House. Not the sensibility of the Crain. Except for Theo who has a true "gift", the other ones are just sensitive. And if you ask someone sensitive to explain it, they won't do it easily. It's just like that. They can describe how it works but not how they got it. Because it was always like that, they just are sensitive. And I think the show done pretty well with that by not explaining it. It would have been like a complete side story and Hill House is already enough to tell. We know that the ghost haunting Luke is the man found behind a wall by Hugh. I don't remember how but the show suggest it. I can be agree about Poppy, we didn't see very much about her but she was so important when you think about it. But again I understand why. The story is about the Crain and what they lived in Hill House but it's not actually about Hill House. That's why it wasn't important to put more depth to Hill House. Same with the powers, It was about a certain tragedy not about the genetics of the Crain (even if it's something Steve talks about). And we have to accept that some things weren't supernatural like the storm.
@@AmericanAppleProd what is the sequel?
This show came out around when my father died. I understand the criticism against the show from a feminist perspective, but as a guy with an extremely complicated relationship with his dad where our one major point of bonding was over our love of horror movies, this show felt tailor made to get me to understand my own grief and actually cry unbidden over how my father died alone and in pain and it took days for him to be discovered and that all I wanted to hear from him is that he was proud to have been *my* dad.
I love horror because it’s the genre best suited to face and talk about things that are painfully intimate and we can’t bring ourselves to speak plainly about because they’re too close to ourselves. I really love this show for how it helped me and I’m glad I’m not alone in that.
BeatFish I’m so sorry for your loss. I’m glad this helped & I hope you’re well.
He was extremely proud to be your dad
I’m so sorry ❤️ he’s definitely proud of you
This is heartbreakingly beautiful man, and hey, from a feminist literary major, I do believe the show does justice to the book, which still holds many compelling female characters and plot lines, and could have some feminist undertones in the men's plot lines too (mental illness and grief in men, toxic motherhood, the reivindication of parenthood, the pressure of the big brother who has to take care of his siblings but doesn't know how to). This show was just a different take from the book that needed to be made. Those of us who have been through childhood trauma and loss of family needed this show.
Also i love what you said about horror, I feel exactly the same way, it brings out human's deepest fears and struggles through the metaphor of the monstrous and uncanny.
This makes me cry... I don't have a good relationship with my mother, I blocked her out of my life for many traumas I experienced through her divorce... I don't know if I will ever accepet her in again, but I fear that what happened to your dad might happen to her... I don't know who I am anymore, honestly, or what to do... But i hope you stay strong and fight for yourself, I really send you good thoughts and condolences. I can't imagine your pain but I hope to transmit something good
I actually do think this show holds onto some of those early feminist themes: if both Olivia and Nell had been listened to and believed, it's possible they'd still be alive, which makes their deaths all the more tragic. That anxiety of not being truly seen is still there, I think especially for Olivia. It's not empowering, like you say, but I do still think it's a concern the show is dealing with.
Brooke Dobossy Yeah, one of the most common obstacles that girls and women face are their problems being dismissed.
I just wrote a comment about this myself, but I couldn’t agree more. I simply don’t agree that this show takes anything away from the feminist storylines, at all. The show made it VERY clear that Nell, Olivia, etc. should have all been listened to. The entire story could’ve been different if Nell’s calls for help had been answered. Her cries for help being ignored is what killed her, and the show makes that theme very clear.
Absolutely agree! And I would question the idea that Nell's story in the novel was particularly empowering rather than tragic as well, but this is a youtube comment and I don't have space/time for an essay.
But one of the running themes throughout the show is how women are dismissed and almost forced to disappear into these predefined roles society has set up for them. Wife, mother, caretaker, victim, the crazy lady no one listens to. Olivia was literally consumed by the anxieties of motherhood. When she went to her husband, he dismissed her fears as stress and hysteria. Shirley was forced into the "oldest sister" role that SO many oldest girls find themselves in, of feeling like she had to take care of everyone and keep the family together, while Steve as the oldest boy and eldest child overall felt no such obligation. Nell's tragedy is that instead of seeking to retreat from the world via Hill House like her book counterpart, she sought answers from the house...but was eventually overcome because no one in her life listened to her or supported her. Yet even after death, she kept demanding to be listened to.
Even that bit near the end that's supposed to be evidence that the show focused on Steve is basically a ghost in the guise of his wife just absolutely roasting him for the way he treats the women in his life like props and sidekicks in "his" story. And if that isn't some feminist commentary on the way men treat women in society AND write them in fiction, I don't know what is.
@Samael go to therapy lol
@@NoCommonSense9 lol why? His/Her points actually makes sense.
OMG the actor that plays Young Nell just kills me. her performance is just "Perfectly Splendid"
Her name is Violet McGraw. She is in a lot of movies such as Doctor Sleep, Black Widow, Separation, and a ton of others. Very talented little girl.
AHHHHH
Flora’s perfectly splendid xD
There is a mirror in hill house that reflects nellie as she is dancing alone, the mirror is the one from oculus. Another easter egg from Mike Flanagan
Really? Awesome. I love Oculus.
The mirror reappears somewhere else in another Flanagan show - this is the best easter egg !
Great, i hated that mirror 😢
I wonder if the mirror and house would compete for souls to collect if it really was the canonically evil mirror, rather than just an Easter egg.
I just remembered that the father Hugh told Steven smth along the lines of: 'I read your book, and you have seen ghosts, too. The man you saw fix the clock? There was no man. The Tree house you played in with luke? There was no tree house.' At the end we realize that the treehouse was the red room all along. And that's crazy to me, bc I didn't really get that the first time. Really good series!
The reveal about the Red Room being all those places at once was mind-blowing. That narrow window haunts me lol.
Hugh saying he didn’t build a treehouse for a place they were going to sell was a “holy shit” moment for me.
Luke triggers my "I can fix him" mentality. Hate that for me.
Freaking same 😞
so you are basically hugh crain
you and millions of other women. That's why I always tell my guy friends. If you need a girl to be interested in you, then don't be perfect. Girls love projects that later they can turn into boyfriends/husbands.
@@adhunikmanav2638 what a disgusting way of thinking, taking advantage of girls is not nice.
@@adhunikmanav2638 not really.....
“The Epitaph” poem was used at the end of The Midnight Club also by Mike Flanagan!
I KNEW IT WAS FAMILIAR
Oop- I just finished rewatching this video for the X time and just commented the same thing 😂😂
No cause I just found out he actually found out about this poem THROUGH THIS VERY VIDEO!!!!
God I loved that show.
Nell’s final speech really helps cope with grief, or as Andrew Garfield said, “our unexpressed love”. The missed calls, the chances you’ll never get back, they all suck. But there were times you still picked up the phone, the time you still spent with your loved one, and the grief you feel towards losing that loved one. That time you gave to them matters more than the ones you missed.
“Maybe the real friends we made were the traumas along the way.”
Mood
I think a big reason why I personally dislike Steve is because I see myself in him and all the things I dislike about him, I dislike about myself. I, like him, am the oldest sibling of a gaggle of kids who experienced severe traumas growing. I was looked at as a mini parent by them and by our rotating cast of guardians. After a while, I rejected that responsibility and became callous and uncaring towards the struggles of my siblings. Steve did the same thing. I hate that I did that and I hate who it made me, so I also hate him. I hate him in a way not many people can hate him because it's deeply personal. HOWEVER, I also heavily empathize with him. He's an asshole, but I get it. It just doesn't make it okay.
(Sidenote: Thank you UA-cam recommendations for recognizing my desire for another channel that does video essays)
I am sorry you went through what you did. I haven't seen the show or anything, but I think it's an interesting indicator of a good character that someone so fully sees themself in him, and relates to him, but hates him because of it
I also find it telling that he is representative of "Denial" and most people try to deny certain things they don't like about themselves.
@@CaptainArthanos Lol, it's okay! That's what therapy is for and I'm much closer to my siblings now that we're older. But, I agree. I deeply envy how well the writers wrote the characters in this show.
@@kyndramb7050 That's an excellent point! That's probably another reason why people like me don't like him. It makes it harder for us to deny the negative traits we have in common with him.
Me too, and I am glad you wrote this because I could not.
The bent neck lady revelation made me actually pause and walk away. I've lost both my parents and I've never really been able to fully come to terms with their passing even though it was in 2013 (my dad, to gangrene) and 2015 (my mom, stage 4 cancer) it just hurt and left me feeling like I had an empty, gaping hole in me. The show actually ended up helping me talk to my therapist about the trauma of losing them so quickly and how much it hurts. So, I have a morosely dramatic horror show to thank for getting me to finally talk about how I was afraid to grieve.
I bet the creators would be really glad to know how many people they’ve helped with the grieving process.
Hi, I love reading what you wrote. I lost my grandfather 5-6 days after I finished this show. He had hypertension, and the night of his hemorrhage, he asked my mother to check his blood pressure. She was on her way out for dinner, so I volunteered to do it instead. He told us there's no need and got ready to sleep. He had the brain bleed at around 3 am, was taken to the mergency room and declared brain dead. We left him on life support for 4 more days till the rest of my mother's sibling could come.
So much of the regret the Crain siblings shared, I saw in my mother and myself. Maybe he would've passed regardless of us checking his BP, or maybe he would've survived to live longer had we caught it before.
Shirley's dialogue where she says, "I'm sorry I didn't answer the phone", and Nell replies, "But you did. So many times", is something that crosses my mind everytime the regret creeps him. I can't forgive me because my Nana can't forgive me, but maybe I can be a littles less harsh on myself.
Art really is cool.
And I feel this is what art is for. Yes, just entertainment is important but the best peaces of art help you deal with your emotions by taking your hand and leading you through it. I always find it fascinating that we crave and need this. I didn't feel good watching the haunting of hill house it made me so sad but still I keep coming back to it. With that being said, thank you so much for sharing this personal info and - even though I always feel that phrase is so used up- I am very sorry for your loss
Not that you "missed" it because it wasn't a main point of the story so I don't think you would have gone into it anyways, but I really loved that Theo's monologue after Nell scares her and Shirley off the road was one of the most perfect descriptions of clinical depression I've ever heard.
Nell clearly suffered from depression, and that monologue did an amazing job of using the literal wondering of "is there nothing left when we die?" as a parallel to how you feel when you suffer from depression.
It's not just "sadness" like a lot of people who haven't experienced real depression think. It's an overwhelming apathy, a suffocating feeling of nothingness, that causes you to question why you are even alive. And as someone who's felt this kind of depression before, Theo's last line in the monologue: "That through fucking shame was so much better than that horrible empty nothing" is one of the most impactful lines in the show (shoutout to Kate Segal for her incredible acting as well).
When you feel that level of depression, honestly you would even trade it for horrible feelings like deep sorrow, shame or guilt because as bad as those make you feel, they still feel better than the nothingness that comes with depression.
I’m glad somebody brought up the ‘I felt NOTHING’ line because it hit me in the gut HARD. Because I also feel too much all of the time and, during times that my thoughts go quiet and my heart stops racing, and I am facing nothingness, I know I need to reach out. But you can’t reach out until you start seeing SOMETHING to reach out to, you know?
So, yeah, it was my favourite (and, simultaneously, least favourite) depiction of depression on screen.
@@fakenamebunchonumbers yeah. Shoutout to the writers for that one, they absolutely nailed it and Kate knocked it out of the park with her acting. It’s my favorite scene from the show by far.
Haunting of Hill house is like "I want more but I had enough but I want more". I guess i just want more of it's greatness
F'n hell.... the whole plot with little Nell, "I was right here, none of you could see me." just broke me heart. Possibly because I'm also the youngest child, and while not as dramatically, I think it's a psychological battle we live with for the rest of our lives. No one listens to the littlest one. And our inputs are rarely taken seriously. Even growing into adulthood, forging our own lives and creating our own accomplishments, there's always that little voice from years of not being heard. I ended that episode in absolute tears.
I'm the middle one, but the quietest and I completly agree
I wasn't expecting to read about my whole life in a UA-cam comment today.
And the worst part of this is that there are no winners. The oldest will have the most weight on their shoulders, they have to be responsible and an example for the younger ones. The middle one is often forgotten, they're not the cute little one or the more sensible older one. They're just there. The youngest one is never taken seriously, they're just the little dumb kid. But also, I'm the stupid pampered younger one so I could be talking out of my ass :D
Isn't this an absolute mood? I'm a youngest child too, and a really really younger at that because my siblings were on the older side of teenagehood when I was born, and you never shake that feeling off. Also, maybe is because I'm way younger than them, but we're never told shit about anything.
big relatable. my experience left me with a persistent worry that my feelings are an inconvenient burden, from everytime an activity got ruined because of my crying, like belonging can only ever be a sacrifice of oneself for others :/
Shirley's desperation to "fix" things mirrors her dad's certainty he can fix things, an echo which hurt my heart when I recognized it.
I was never sure that Olivia consciously realized that her plan would kill her kids, because she seemed somewhat convinced that she and the twins needed to wake up. It reminded me of Inception, where Mal became unable to tell when she was in a dream and tried to wake herself up without realizing that she was already awake. I think Olivia sort of knew what she was doing with the rat poison but also believed that this was all just a dream, so it wouldn't actually harm the kids because it wasn't real. Remember, she believed that Hugh was the one who was going to kill the kids, when she chased after them to prevent Hugh from taking the kids away from the house. She thought Hugh was going to kill the kids and wanted to rescue them. Which might just make this more tragic...And the scene between Hugh and Olivia's ghost at the end reminded me of Marlin and Dory in Finding Nemo, when Marlin tells Dory that he'd promised that nothing would ever happen to Nemo and Dory points out that that means nothing would ever happen to Nemo at all. It was a weird connection to make.
Regarding Marlin and Dory's conversation about Nemo - no, not a weird connection to make. I thought of the same thing.
The way Ghost Olivia looks at Steve over Hugh’s shoulder during that hug sends shivers up my spine.
THATS WHY I WANT MORE FUCK BANOR MANOR OR WHATEVER LIKE WTF THAT SCENE IS ENOUGH TO MAKE THE VIEWERS WANT A FOLLOW UP! Now we have to assume that look is Olivia thinking, "This is what I wanted". Olivia didnt want stephen sadly, or the girls. She only wanted her twins......... She got Nell, and in exchange for Luke, she got Hugh. The house and Liv had to settle for Hugh. BUILD OFF OF THIS
Greg Kava I actually wrote in a previous comment that I interpreted that expression very differently. I felt like it was Liv struggling to keep up her end of the deal and possibly considering breaking it to take Stephen. I think that Nell shut the door on Olivia to save Steve one last time.
Leslie I agree, it looked like Olivia wanted to take Stephen too. I don’t think that was Olivia so much as a physical representation of the house itself. Like it was using Olivia to manipulate them.
Depressed 20 something I think it’s possible that she is completely the house by that point. The other thought I had was that maybe Olivia fought through for one final moment to shut the door to save Stephen. I think it makes more sense in the narrative for it to be Nelly though.
Leslie either way it was an interesting scene, to see the difference in Nell and her mother in that final moment.
what broke me into tears the first time watching this was learning about Luke’s reason for counting from 1-7, and that, his family, knowing they’re there is keeping him grounded, and I’m literally tearing up thinking about this right now
I teared up too. It was a total gut punch.
I love that the cracking on the bent neck lady’s skin and dress mimicked the pattern of the black mold on the wall.
Massive W to Mike for coming out and unambiguously saying “yes, this is a happy ending. Yes, it had to be that way. No, there’s no hidden darkness to it”.
Which I love cuz I just know it made so many film theorists mad.
I sobbed like a freaking baby throughout Nell's monologue. It changed me as a person. My mom died a year ago while I was holding her hand and let me just tell you, I have never seen as realistic and raw and truth-to-life representation of how grief feels like as this show. This whole thing is a masterpiece of portraying the most difficult and complex emotions that exist. Beautiful thing and you did it absolute justice with your analysis. Thank you.
I’m the same. I lost my mum really suddenly almost two years ago now too, and hearing Nell’s line, “I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti,” always makes me have to pause and cry hard for a few minutes myself because it hurts that much. I can’t hate Steven, or any characters in this show, because their portrayal of grief and trauma is so realistically all encompassing despite their attempts to stifle it and store it away. It was a really cathartic show to watch.
I lost my dad June of the year that hill house came out. I expected to be scared when I first watched it not to gain a new perspective on grief and death. It’s so raw and beautiful and at the same time it’s almost cruel with how realistic it is with showing grief. Every time I hear nellie’s speech at the end I start crying, I don’t think any other show has done that for me since.
So sorry for your loss :(( ❤️❤️❤️
@@caitlinsloan2475 so sorry for your loss :(( ❤️❤️❤️
I dont thing Steve was the main protagonist. I never had the feeling anyone was the maincharacter because the story always puts someone different in the center.
For me, the house was the main character, I'd hazard a guess and say that it probably what they intended. Although each episode focused on different characters, it was always about how the house had affected them and how they dealt with the trauma caused by the house.
@@HannahwithaH - yes. In Harry Potter, said boy is the center of the story, taking him out would completely derail the plot. He is the character that is essential to the story being told.
Hill House is the center, is beginning, and is the end of the story. You can take any of the characters out and the story being told doesn’t change; they are just there to experience the character of the House. They are different reactions to meeting an entity of absolute reality; skepticism, confusion, uncertainty, and acceptance in the Mother’s case. The characters were built around the House. The house stood for a hundred years and will stand for a hundred more.
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
@@HannahwithaH Definitely - it kinda reminds me of Star Trek where the Enterprise is quite a character of her own too. All the characters are linked to it the the show couldn't exist without it.
@@kg356 Agreed - they often came together because of her.
I didnt realize it has been 5 years since this show came out. I absolutely loved it when it came out and havent stopped thinking about it. But I forgot just how much this show *wrecked* me. Just watching these clips make me cry. Mike Flanagan's works are so impactful. I'd love to see a video essay on his new series The Fall of the House of Usher.
This is like the 5th time I watch this video and it's now that I realize what it means that in episode 6 everyone but Nell's corpse is in blue, whereas she's in red. In a video analysis by Hue Hues, he pointed out how blue (associated with Hugh) symbolized reality whereas red (associated with Olivia) symbolized the red door and fantasy. Therefore, while the dead Nell is trapped in the world of the red door (red funeral dress) , the rest of the family are still in reality (blue clothes).
Another interesting thing to think about are the pink nightgowns Olivia and Nell wore when they died. It can be read not only as a visual connection between them, but also as a symbol of the threshold to the red room's world. Pink, as the lighter version of red (fantasy), is like the last step before falling into the abyss in multiple ways, no pun intended. And it's not just because the 2 women wore pink when they died, but also because Nell keeps wearing the pink dress after death while Olivia dons the red dressing gown. Olivia has completely succumbed to the fantasy of Hill House and become a manifestation of the red room. However, because Nell managed to regain sense right before she died and realized what was really happening, she didn't completely succumb to that lure. Therefore, she might be in a perpetual threshold between reality and fantasy that prevents her from becoming like Olivia's spirit and helps save her siblings.
And since Hugh willingly sacrificed his life for his kids, his realistic mind (symbolized by his blue clothes), however broken by grief it became through the years, will also prevent him from becoming like Olivia. He's not crazy despite what he looks like to outsiders, he's fully aware that his mental Olivia is just that, a coping mechanism in his mind. He never let's go of his reality, just extends it to include the ghosts of Hill House.
What about at the end when Hugh’s ghost is wearing red? He still seems to know that it’s a fantasy, but the red jacket would suggest otherwise.
@@Laura_Parenti He remains in the blue suit when he embraces Liv and Nell in the red room. If you mean the red/maroon/purpley jacket when he is in the middle of the custody battle with Janet, that may reflect that he is forced to accept the fantasy in order to protect his family and the Dudleys.
I swear, the tall man who shows up in Luke's episode scared the shit out of me. It's rare I'm gripped with such terror as I was watching him float through the hallways and into their room.
YEES that bit messed me up too and it's rare that I can get pretty scared
i was more scared to see him follow him around when he was an adult, always with his back turned but always there.
I loooove when Poppy talks about him. In life he was short, but then he "woke up" and then he was tall... I would a longer video on just him...
The video's ending is as beautiful as the ending of the series.
Thank you so much! That means a lot.
"face your demons"
"NOT YOUR ACTUAL DEMONS"
Thank you for listing the jump scare times in the description. Signed, an Autistic and easily startled viewer who only go through the whole show using the site Where's the Jump?
I am very jumpy in real life so I'm glad I could help
That entire last chapter in this video choked me up and put tears in my eyes, gods, ouch, oof, good job, I need to go hug my friend now thank you
Aww, thank you for watching
I cried 7 times during this video. Absolutely amazing.
I cried during the last episode in probably one of the few times a TV show has made me legitimately bawl some gross, snotty tears.
This review, watching it probably well over a year after finishing the show, made me bawl the same gross, snotty tears. I'm talking some lip-quivering, "I-want-to-vocally-scream" tears of sadness... I have to be up in a few hours...
Same. I cried during the series, but shit. This video condensed it. I don't regret the tears. Well done, everybody.
I've watched this show three times now and I still can't stop the tears. Hugh's line about holding the door shut with both arms outstretched but having no arms left to hold his children tears at me. I think about this show all the time
Seen it thrice too .
The way Nell says “Forgiveness is warm” is said in such a.. well, warm way, it starts the waterworks every time for me.
This show was just unbelievable. I wish I could wipe my memory of it and watch it again for the first time. The horror elements are perfect the story being told is beautiful, tragic, haunting. I don’t think there will ever be a horror tv show as good as this ever again. Flanagan is a horror icon and the world is a better place with his work in it.
The Mr. Smiley story is so horrific oh my god
The story really ruined me and still leaves me speechless
This show is maybe the most surprisingly emotional thing I've ever seen.
I came for the scares, I stayed for the OMG I JUST WANT THEIR FAMILY TO BE TOGETHER AND HAPPY PLEASE GOD WHY
gotta disagree that the show was "mainly" about steven, he was the author of the book about their whole lives but much of the show was about the female characters
Yeah and saying that this adaptation is not like the first "feminism" one is kinda weird. This show is about family. The whole family is the main character! Not steven.
@@Cherry-bj7dd I agree completely
i agree
@@Cherry-bj7dd well, it isn't. Even if you disagree about steven being the main character, the first 'hill house' had a prominent theme of female empowerment, this one doesn't. Which is fine imo they're different stories, and it makes sense that a young father would see and care about different themes than a repressed housewife, but it's still noteworthy
I think stevn is the bookend, fitting for him as a writer
Honestly sometimes I just watch this video when I need to cry. In the process of trying to get through grief, I return to this video, and it makes me cry every time.
the one frame where you talk about the witness marks and how the children rationalize what happened in the house around 48:00 mark, the text says it would be great to hear how theo rationalizes them: i think she doesnt say because shes a middle child, she's literally in the middle.
for luke and nel the events were so real that they literally haunted them in physical form of the ghosts well into adulthood, and for steve and shirley they were something that their brains made up. the age order of the kids lines them up from most denying to most directly affected, and theo is smack down in the middle. she has her powers so she cant completely deny the existence of supernatural but she hasnt been directly affected by ghost stuff so she cant 100% confirm it either.
she's bargaining with herself how much of it was real, if you will.
and as a tie-in to her career, she often lets other people voice their opinions and decides where the conversation needs to go based on that instead of bringing herself into it in the first place. She doesn't do much talking in the money scene until everyone else has refused it, and that's why she had to leave the room on a one-liner. Not so much making a decision on the morality of it, on other peoples' reactions, but something for herself, AFTER she understands how stubborn they're all gonna be about the fight
A brilliant explanation
Like you, I think of Theo in the middle. I think she did believe in Luke and Nell’s experiences but I also think she forcibly closed her mind to venturing further down that path - like Steve and Shirl.
perfect
the final shot of Two Storms with Nell being left unseen and all alone had me bawling my eyes out like you would not believe. even now i'm starting to cry a little bit just seeing it again
It breaks my heart that so many of their last words to Nell are apologies. Cause that's what we all fear: having regrets, needing to make apologies to our loved ones when they pass. "What if that's the last thing you said to your [blank] before they died?" Wouldn't you be sorry?
I'm not crying - YOU'RE crying!
"I've never seen a ghost"
THE GANG SEES A GHOST
Please do a video essay of Bly Manor, I would love to see the comparisons. Personally I believe Hill house was a story of loss in family while Bly manor is more of loss in love.
Curse you for reminding me this existed and putting me through all the feels again
A lot of this adaptation of Haunting of Hill House comes across as poetry to me. From the dialogue to the cinematography, editing etc etc… it’s all poetry. And not all of it is good, not everyone will like it- but overall it just… moves you. It has a message that speaks to your soul.
It’s a shame that Haunting of Hill House wasn’t nominated for any Emmys. Just a shame.
I've watched this show 3 times now and every time Nell says "... the rest is confetti" i just start crying. this show is a masterpiece of storytelling.
And I'm crying about Hill House again. (I have more to say, but when I try to put it in words I just wanna start crying again. I'm glad we're seeing multiple shows tackling the different ways childhood trauma manifests in adulthood (Umbrella Academy being the other, which I could also write tomes about, but probably *could* actually write it b/c I'm not holding back sobs).)
Wonderful analysis. I was about to go rewatch except it's 0144 & that is the worst idea. Love this video! Great job
I may have actually cried more in the last hour than I did the first time watching through the show
57:56 "go"
58:02 "don't"
Nell says "go" to Luke in the rehap center after she dies and Joey flees.
Nell says "don't" to Luke at the cemetery right before Olivia tried to pull him into the grave.
YUP! Nell experiencing time out of order again. Pretty sure she's telling him 'dont go' (AKA don't go to Hill House, don't go into the red room, etc)
@@Ladyknightthebrave YEA we can see this happen with nell often enough its a pattern. Not only is this part her saying "go" and "dont" at the other times in the show as well, but she also experienced it at first in the red room, before she talks about the confetti she says bits and pieces of what she is about it say. Only when Shirley asks about it does she start the monologue
Nell IS my FAVORITE (next to theo)
And Olivia says "Stay" as she tries to pull Luke into the grave.
We get the conversation of the tea party while Luke is dying over and over again throughout the show and it is so clever and so heartbreaking once you realise.
@@Bloodanna q- a+à]
Yeah I never saw Steven as the main character. They all feel like the main characters in different moments. But Steven was never my least favorite character either. I love them all honestly
The strongest feeling I got from this show as the message that we're all haunted by something, and to rob our ghosts of their power we have to face them. Only then can we start to recover from what hurts us. I'm a baby about certain kinds of horror, and this show initially scared me badly enough to cut into my sleep for a couple weeks. But once I was finished with it, I felt rewarded for making it through. The story is rich, and the ghosts aren't as scary by the end. Mostly I just want to give every one of these hurt characters a hug, because goddamn the actors are so good at making me believe these people are real.
when you said 'possibly a 1950s term for a fuckboi' two seconds after I said 'a fuckboi' 😂
I keep being astonished at how perfectly cast childhood Shirley is. She looks so much like the adult counterpart and was a very good actor compared to a lot of other child actors (including some of the others in the same series cough cough)
wait who is this comment shading ?
@@damaged.collateral the kid actor for Luke..... didn't look like him and was a terrible actor. kid Nellie wasn't great either, but at least she looked the part, and tbf she was the youngest.
N Violet mm excluding the scene with the tall man that reached under his bed, his performance came off a little weaker but i didn’t mind all that much; after all, he’s a child and could personally probably act circles around me lmao. those glasses they gave him really didn’t help with the optics at all, though.
@@damaged.collateral maybe the fact that luke and nell don’t look as similar to their adult counterparts as the other siblings do is deliberate and ties in with the idea in olivia’s head that the outside world and their futures have already dug their claws into them, whereas the twins can still be “saved”
@@katiefox734 I don't get it. Can you elaborate? How will that change the DNA? I don't mind that they don't look like their adult versions btw. It can be very tough to find such actors.
Storytime:
I watch the whole series with my family. Every Saturday we would join in the living room and watch 1 or 2 episodes at a time, in the last months this has been the highlight of my week. When it came for the finale I was weeping. HARD. I was not expecting that reaction for me and neither did my family.
When it finished, we turn on the lights and they just.. hug me. They let me cry my eyes out and stayed there with me with hugging me and letting me know without words that they were there and that it was okay.. which make me weeping 1000x more.. but in a good way.
So just wanna say.. thank you. If it wasn't for your video I wouldn't had the bravery to watch it in the first place (I'm just a scary cat like you)
Mike Flanagan just used “Epitaph” by Merrit Malloy in ‘Midnight Club’-I know it must’ve been due to someone in the writers room seeing this video! The poem fit nicely into the context of the show, but I’ll always associate it with the confetti monologue from HoHH…
I could LITERALLY write a book about this version of The Haunting of Hill House.
Re: Steven - he's not my favorite of the kids, but I think he's got a really great character arc. In the first episode, when Hugh whisks him out of the house, Hugh tells him to close his eyes. And when they're driving away from the house, Hugh is telling the kids not to look back and Steven is the ONLY ONE who does. Then, when they return at the end of the series, Hugh tells Steven to look at him to divert his attention from the Bowler Hat ghost. At every turn, Steven is being told to look away from the horrors happening around him, to act like they don't exist. And he literally learned it from his dad. So the fact that he wrote the book at all is strikingly brave of him - considering how everyone reacted, it was the one time he actually tried to LOOK back at what happened because he's being told not to look back, but he knows it's unresolved. And then, once he knows the truth from Hugh, and has come to peace with the house, he can leave this time WITHOUT looking back because he's finally put all the ghosts of Hill House behind him for good.
Also re: the proto-feminist themes of the original book - I have some, ahem, unpopular opinions. As much as I'm here for the themes of repressed femininity, I don't think a "faithful" adaptation of Jackson's book would have really worked in the modern day, just because the portrayals of those themes as they were depicted in the original text are fairly outdated in terms of moder feminist discourse. BUT I'd argue that the series still maintains the same collection of themes and clearly understands the book incredibly well.
Book!Eleanor isn't just representative of repressed 1950s femininity, but she's also the anxious outcome of a lifetime of abuse at the hands of her late mother and her sister. Both are shown to have been extremely verbally and emotionally abusive to her (and potentially physically in the case of her mother.) So she is so deeply insecure and desperate for real love but also terrified whenever any affection is shown to her. Throughout the book, she's dealing with the trauma of her abusive upbringing, and projecting her skewed expectations and assumptions onto the other characters. She's simultaneously desperate for the approval and attention of Theo and Dr. Montague and Luke, but terrified that any attention they give her is simply "mocking" her or insincere - hence, why she's always so anxious to speak and always feels unseen by the others. And in the moments that she is assured of their sincerity, she's suddenly jealous of their relationships with one another and terrified that they'll abandon her.
Book!Eleanor ends up totally enamoured with the house because it's mind games are a substitute for the psychological abuse of her late mother. It's been normalized for her, which is why everyone else is scared of what happens in the house, while Eleanor EMBRACES it. It's her "home" because her only measurement of "home" is a constant turmoil of familial abuse. Everyone else can see it, except for Eleanor, to the point that she believes that when they're sending her away from the house for her safety, they're ACTUALLY doing it because they hate her. Her world-view has become so warped by her own trauma that she ends up self-destructing and killing herself because she literally cannot believe that these people care for her.
And I think Flanagan does an INCREDIBLE job at conveying all of those themes - the way that family trauma makes people self-destruct, the complicated nature of abusive and erratic parents and their children's relationships with them, the nature of mental illness, Nell's inability to be seen or heard because of her own experiences as well as her feelings of isolation even when she's with people who DO love her, the ways that we let each other down even when we don't mean to, the ways that people ignore these problems until it's too late, and that sometimes trauma can completely consume families (like that more-bitter-than-sweet moment with the Dudleys, where their inability to move beyond their trauma means that the house manages to take them all.)
And then he gives Nell a cathartic ending. She's not just consumed by the house and her own trauma like she is at the end of book, but she gets to come to peace with the fact that her siblings DID care for her as she cared for them, even if they couldn't always give each other what they needed. And that it's possible for people to heal from their traumas and move forward with their lives.
We've seen a million tragic horror stories where people are destroyed by their traumas, particularly in the cycles of family traumas.
So I deeply admire Flanagan for understanding the source material, while giving those people who have been through trauma hope that they aren't just doomed to self-destruct, but that they have the ability to heal and grow.
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
thank you this is amazing
Thoroughly enjoyed this. I'll be waiting for the book.
Loved it
Now we only wait for "The Hunting Of Bly Menor" video.
im so glad they didnt add the window at the end. it ended on 7 family members again, they built back things they had lost :(
One of my favorite aspects of the adaptation is the children’s psychic power. Obviously Theo’s is the strongest, but they ALL have it. Olivia says only the women have it but her sons do, the siblings say it’s a “twin thing” to account for Nell and Luke’s bond, but again it’s all of them. And then there’s Hugh, the only member of the family who truly doesn’t, but is after Olivia’s death so open to the house and to his uncanny children who won’t even talk to him. It’s so touching and heartbreaking, all of it.
Also, Victoria Pedretti should have gotten an Emmy nomination for playing Nell. The noises she makes throughout the show, moans and whimpers while she clamps her mouth closed in an attempt to not truly cry, if you’ve ever witnessed someone in extreme grief, losing a loved one or having been betrayed by someone they truly trusted, that’s the sound you hear.
Also, in the Luke episode, when he’s out on the streets everyone sees him and wrongly assumes he’s using opioids again. But he is in DTs, not for drugs but for Nell, literally the other half of his soul. It’s heart wrenching.
The only moment that made me sob more than Nell’s death - the house making her believe she was with Arthur again - was the moment with Mr. Dudley carrying his dying wife to the house so she can be with her babies for eternity. That moment absolutely made me lose it.
This was truly the scene that made me sob (the one with the Dudleys). I thought I was going to make it to the end without crying, but nope
This was truly the scene that made me sob (the one with the Dudleys). I thought I was going to make it to the end without crying, but nope
I binged all of The Haunting of Hill House during over like two days in my senior year of college. I was up all day and all night, and when my roommate left to do janitorial duty on campus at 4AM she told me that if I was still awake when she got home at 7, she would physically rip the TV off the wall. I sobbed so hard during the ending that i gave myself a sleep-deprivation migraine and crawled into bed as my roommate walked through the door. It was the best night of my senior year.
I love that kind of gut-wrenching cry. I can't cry over my own life so it's nice to be able to do that over stuff that has nothing to do with me.
I disagree that Steve was the center of the show. I would say that Olivia was. She was the heart of the family, kids' trauma revolves mainly around her. Olivia's death broke the family and their lives.
Edit: Thanks for all the likes!
On my third rewatch of the series I think now I understand why we start and end with Steve: as one of the replies mentioned, it's partly because the series go from eldest to youngest sibling. But also I think we start with the most skeptical sibling so that as Steve discovers that ghosts are real most people in the audience (who are, i believe, in our days and age don't really believe in ghosts) can discover in with him. So the series just makes a stronger connection with audience and hooks us up from the very beginning.
But i still do not believe that Steve is the main protagonist.
WaterResistance Maybe not the center, but he was arguably presented as the overall protagonist, with his point of view/character development framing the beginning and end of the story.
the main character was the House.
I felt the center of the show was Nell and Olivia. Nell was the protagonist that saved her siblings, she held the family together and the story in the adult timeline is entirely based around her death and her actions as a ghost. Olivia is just as important because her death is what caused the characters trauma. She also worked as an antagonist to the show along side Poppy and was responsible for killing Nell. Steven had the first episode and was a narrator, he in the grand scheme of things probably contributed the least to the overall plot and progression of the story. The next most important character to the story would probably have to be Hugh or Theo.
there's a difference between being the central plot element and being the protagonist.
Thank you..... I felt that was a personal reach cause I've literally heard no one turn this into a gender vs gender thing nor have I heard anyone say Steve was the center of the show...... I felt it was a family thing with a lot of the focus on Neil........But mainly it was about the whole family.
This is genuinely one of the only video essays I’ve seen on UA-cam that’s actually substantive and not just someone talking a lot and saying very little.
hey! i came back to this essay because i just finished watching the midnight club and i KNOW i heard the epitaph before somewhere and i remembered you! you make such brilliant videos that i never skipped a single ad bcs u deserve so much and more. thank you for making these, they are so worth the hours.
oh, and may i suggest another netflix series? it's a german drama called dark and it spans for 3 seasons and is just *chef's kiss*. i think you'll like it. more power to you queen 💖
One of these days I plan to watch dark, it's on the watchlist 😁
I never noticed Nells face as the red Room close. I was too busy watching Olivia staring discontentedly back at me. Would love to know what she was thinking
Olivia’s face to me reads as dissatisfied. I feel she didn’t want to make the deal to give her kids up with Hugh so she stared Steven down like “go before I change my mind” she hid it from Hugh as they embraced but she wanted her kids there
As someone who was traumatized by the Nightmare before Christmas as a child, I felt that intro in my bones. Thanks for the continuous amount of amazing content,
YES. Also. This is incredibly stupid but. Did anyone else get traumatized by a live action musical home VHS from Disney set in Disney World? Specifically, it was the singing trees from the haunted mansion. Those fucking trees looked like the demon love child of Cthulhu, a Klan member, & cheap crepe ribbon. Just hearing the music that they sang would send me into a fit of terror. WTF Disney. But mostly WTF to my mom who never ceased to be entertained at my panic when she teased me about it. Like, sneaking to behind me & singing that song as I jumped 10 feat in the air and started screaming & crying at her. >:|
That "I was here the whole time" scene had me welling up even in this video. Well over a year after watching this show. Holy crap this show did a number on my feels, wasn't expecting such a fast re-surfacing of that 😭
I had no idea people disliked Steven lol. I think he’s a solid character. He grows as a person. He does some shitty things, but all the characters do. They’re all deeply human.
So this became one of my favorite shows the instant I started watching it, and as such I've seen a lot of UA-cam videos of it. Steven is definitely hated. He gets the most hate, probably as much as even Shirley, which is wild to me.
He treated his dad like garbage...If he was in our family,he would have been in therapy so quick his head would have fallen off..everyone suffered trauma,but his obnoxiousness was a turn offf
You are the most underrated youtuber I know. You put so much gorgeous work into your videos, and every minute is a delight. I got so many chills watching this. I really hope you keep making videos and people appreciate you more as time goes on. Thanks for doing what you do.
Thank you, that's very kind of you to say
@@Ladyknightthebrave true, this is one of the best vidoe essays i ve ever seen and trust me i ve seen a lot, the haunting of hill house is very underrated. keep up the good work, and thank you for appreciating this magnificient show
Except she got a shout out from the man himself on twitter ;-)
arnemyggen Did she?!? Amazing! Sounds like something he would do. I’ve been stalking him for months waiting for a release date announcement. I believe many of us desperately need the distraction.
This video has over 200,000 views and the likes to dislikes ratio puts the likes at over 99%...that's not what "underrated" means.
When you credited Victoria Pedretti with acting chops in the scene of her husband's death I remembered where I knew her from. She plays the "love" interest in the second season of "You" and her acting mesmerized me from the first second she was on screen. She's able to convey real emotion with just a look or a word... She's going places.
[SPOILER FOR SEASON TWO OF “YOU”]
The scene where love was confessing to Joe that she killed Delilah, and that she’s actually just as obsessed as him was absolutely amazing. It gives me chills every time I watch it
Luke was the cutest kid ever and I felt so bad for him