The curse of Hill House: exceptional account of a classic horror

The Curse of Hill House (The Haunting of Hill House, USA, 2018).
Created by: Mike Flanagan.
Interpretation: Elizabeth Reaser, Michiel Huisman, Victoria Pedretti, Kate Siegel, Oliver Cohen, Carla Gugino, Henry Thomas and Timothy Hutton.
Available in: Netflix.
Our opinion: excellent.

Shirley Jackson is one of the mid-twentieth century writers who understood in her horror stories the neurotic pulse that was shaking in time. Reluctant to the interviews, in his brief and very brief statements, he always said that fear was one of the key feelings of his time and that his literature could be considered as a long document of this incessant escalation of his life. anguish that dominated the world.
The Curse of Hill House – published in 1959 – was one of his most famous works, influential for writers such as


Stephen King
who has always declared his most fervent admirer and the subject of a strange cult, born of the disturbing version of Robert Wise of 1963 and magnified by the tragic death of the lord. author, two years later. The creator Mike Flanagan returns to this work with irreverence and originality, tracing the paths traced by the text to penetrate in its gaps, its suggestions, a conception of the horror that comes from the deepest recesses.

The story of this haunted mansion is built on a dual temporality: the present and the past of the Crain family. Previously, the children were small and they wandered in the dark and bare hallways, in endless wrapping boxes, among the remains of an ancient tradition imprinted on the walls and mysterious objects. Everyone now seems to continue his life, clinging to that accursed memory, linked to monstrous dreams and painful addictions, numbed by a fear that seems conbad. Flanagan's scenario is a rigorous and precise narrative: temporary jumps, the army of personal stories, the ends that are linked and that make sense of the story over the episodes. But his greatest achievement is
where situates terror: with very few surprises and little appearances, the most frightening moments of the new series of


Netflix
are immersed in the spirit of their characters, in this childhood tinged with holes and forgetfulness, in those omens shaking the night like the darkest nightmares.

Flanagan understands that the vitality of Jackson's work lies in this In tune with his time, which is much closer to the present than it seems there. This constant feeling of agitation that shakes his characters, these fears hidden in the most everyday scenarios, this frustration at the inattention of others, their lack of empathy or humanity, are the causes of the slow disintegration of 'a man. balance that takes the shape of the spiral staircase of the dark house. "A skeleton in the forest" is defined by the younger sister's psychiatrist to evoke her enchantment. But the spell is still there, illuminated when it wakes up with memories, because it is they who keep it alive.