The master of humanist horror is back with his Netflix swan song, premiering this spooky season on the major streaming platform. Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher is a bloody, gutsy scream of a good time, and one of the best adaptations the writer-director has done to date (we keep saying that don’t we?).
The limited series is an immense achievement in translating much of Edgar Allen Poe’s infamous work to the screen in a fresh, daringly contemporary style while maintaining the essence of his original notorious short stories and poems. Dripping with gothic romanticism and boasting astounding performances from the entire ensemble – with a heightened level of unrelenting brutality from the director – it is once again, another Flanagan triumph.
As we open, it is nearly the end for one Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), a forbidding yet deeply haunted soul, the once ruthlessly untouchable CEO of the corrupt yet majorly successful pharmaceutical company he shared with his sister Madeline: Fortunado Industries. But when we meet him he is a failing man with all six of his children dead. And what was left of his shoddy legacy crumbling around the helpless magnate with no amount of money that could save him.
He paces across a decrepit, candle-lit room in a dank, rotting house to clutch an exorbitant diamond-encrusted bottle of spirits. Sitting across from one C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), a police investigator that’s been relentlessly on the Usher empire’s heels for literal decades. The mogul is aware he is nearing his end and is willing to bear it all to Dupin, finally exposing the mountain of family secrets, sins and scandals.
Perhaps this is a genuine last ditch effort to make things right or a desperate, selfish lunge towards finding some personal redemption, it’s hard to say with such a tenebrous individual. Either way, Dupin sits back in his armchair, begins an audio recording and gives the go ahead for Roderick Usher to finally confess his transgressions. Exposing a brutal and gruesome past that we find was only ever destined to end in violence and pain.
The Fall of the House of Usher has already been hailed by critics as a sort of horror-meets-Succession phenomenon. Combining Flanagan’s favorite horror elements with the tantalizing politics of large scale monopolies and dramatic complexities of twisted family entrepreneurship. Each Usher heir bathes in power, wealth, privilege and ignorance until their status as untouchable begins to crumble, when members of the infamous bloodline begin to die in a multitude of horrific ways that each reflect a certain Poe tale.
The series admittedly takes a risk as each episode diverges to mainly focus and follow one of the deceased Usher offspring in their final days, uncovering the truth of what lead to their grisly, often gory demises. The full story spans decades, jumping through time to sluggishly yet neatly piece the elaborate, intertwining tale together. The series’ structure could have easily fallen apart here, becoming muddled and ultimately missing the mark. But fortunately the more than adept Flanagan is able to compose and weave a beautifully haunting human story around this elusive family.
It’s fair to say that every one of the Usher family members is just as macabre and idiosyncratic as their name. Between the founding siblings Roderick and Madeline (Mary McDonnell), Roderick’s extremely young partner, Juno (Ruth Codd), and Roderick’s six offspring by five different women, they comprise quite the curious group of individuals. There’s a handful of familiar faces, such as the kiss-ass Frederick, played by Henry Thomas, Camille (Kate Siegel), the PR finessing agent, and a larger-than-life Napoleon (Rahul Kohli), a spiraling addict and video game indulger.
T’Nia Miller is Victorine, a twisted experimental scientist along with Samantha Sloyan as the mentally deteriorating business mogul, Tamerlane. Sauriyan Sapkota is the partygoer and youngest of the Usher siblings, Prospero, and Kyliegh Curran is the easily the most sweet-hearted of the group as the only Usher grandchild.
Mark Hamill is conniving as Arthur Pym – coined the “Pym Reaper” as close to family as one can get and the longtime lawyer and loyal defender of the idiosyncratic family. There are too many talented individuals to mention, but Zach Gilford and Willa Fitzgerald are also a powerhouse duo in their portrayal of a younger Roderick and Madeline.
The performances are impressive and deadly fun to watch as the entire ensemble plays with toxic family dynamics and disastrous business endeavors. Though not one of them is able to escape a bloody demise. The scene stealing performance comes from one Carla Gugino as Verna, a shape shifting figure who has more than a little to do with the deaths of the entire family. She thrives in this multifaceted role and flaunts her incredible skill of versatility with ease – checking the boxes of both unnervingly terrifying and perfectly splendid.
Throughout the series as we learn more and more about this deplorable family. Flanagan does not ask his audience to necessarily sympathize with his cast of contentious characters. Rather, asks the viewer to at the very least understand why they turned out the way they did. Irredeemable as they may all be, the director has an uncanny ability to showcase the human inside each individual. Giving the viewer an unfiltered perspective into what has shaped each of them.
Flanagan – with four episodes directed by Michael Fimognari – do this by doing a deep dive, delving into their personal life, their struggles, their mental state and the sheer impact of how simply being an heir to the Usher dynasty has irrevocably condemned each offspring. Something that, despite their often heinous actions, can at the very least be agreed on – the offspring did not ever ask for such. Flanagan proves again that no matter how dark, violent or bloody his work can become, the very core of his storytelling is innately human, cemented in empathy and challenging a viewer to take on new, sometimes difficult perspectives.
With The Newton Brothers’ eerily captivating score as a backdrop, sprinkled throughout Usher are chill-inducing recitations of a handful of Poe’s poems. The episodes themselves based on a different short story from “The Masque of the Red Death” to “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Bruce Greenwood and Carla Gugino in particular perform haunting renditions of Poe’s “The Raven” and “The City in the Sea” respectively, in a way that melds seamlessly into the story itself, the presence of the poems not jarring in the slightest. They help develop characters, push the plot, support themes of greed, regret, pain, shame, loss, death, even love – the list goes on. The same themes that Poe’s writing encapsulates are present on screen, cementing the series as an honorable homage to the iconic horror writer of the past.
The Fall of the House of Usher is quite the feat to pull off. It tackles jumping timelines, juggles an enormous ensemble, intricate interwoven storylines and even shapeshifting demons. While simultaneously honoring one of the greatest poets and horror writers to have lived. Not only a cohesive conglomerate of Poe’s works, it tackles themes of classism as well as the scandal that is “Big Pharma” and its millions of voiceless victims. All while toying with a scrumptiously dark and gothic aesthetic.
With all of this combined and more, it’s quite the tall order. Mercifully, Mike Flanagan, once more, has rolled up his sleeves and carefully crafted a looming and sinister story, built on corruption and deceit with scares and gore aplenty. This isn’t without his signature tender, soulful elements buried beneath (if perhaps buried a bit deeper than usual). But even when the enormous waves of fate – which we and the characters have been expecting – come to desecrate the empire he’s built, it’s more than a perfect full-circled tale of the grim and ghastly. And would assuredly, dare one declare, have been right up Poe’s alley.
