Poe meets Succession in the trailer for Mike Flanagan’s Fall Of The House Of Usher
Mike Flanagan heard you like Edgar Allan Poe, so he put Poe in this Poe show so you can Poe while you Poe
Aux News Mike Flanagan
For years, writer/director Mike Flanagan has brought an annual scary series to Netflix—beginning with The Haunting Of Hill House and going through The Haunting Of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and last year’s The Midnight Club—but back in December we heard that Flanagan would not be renewing his development deal with Netflix and that he and producing partner Trevor Macy would be switching to Prime Video.
But, for fans of this tradition, Flanagan has one last Netflix miniseries on the way to make your spooky season a little spookier: The Fall Of The House Of Usher. Loosely (looooosely) based on the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name, the series is about the evil CEO of a pharmaceutical company facing a reckoning for the dark deeds committed by him and his family, and it just got its first trailer:
In case the “nevermore” bit didn’t tip you off, the series is doing a whole Edgar Allan Poe thing, not just the story it takes its name from, but it remains to be seen if this is some kind of elaborate Poe mash-up or if those things will just be Easter eggs for the true Raven-heads out there. There are also Succession vibes, as if that show invented the trope of the bad rich family where everyone is bad and rich, but the Poe stuff seems like a more explicit and purposeful ad (there’s a “nevermore” bit and not an “eldest boy” bit).
The Fall Of The House Of Usher is coming to Netflix on October 12, and it stars Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Mary McDonnell, Carl Lumbly, Mark Hamill, Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, Samantha Sloyan, and T’Nia Miller. And with this done, Flanagan is hopefully hard at work on his Dark Tower adaptation.
19 Comments
House of Usher is a very short story so it makes sense he would cram in some other Poe nods. Looks good though. If anything these have been decent annual Halloween things to binge, although I think Hill House was the best one and they’ve been diminishing returns since.
Except, of course, Midnight Mass (2021) which was great
Gonna watch this, but if the monologue count goes past 5 in the first episode, I’m stopping.
I think Midnight Mass is on par with Hill House. I didn’t like Bly Manor as much, but I still enjoyed it.
The other one, was it Midnight Club(?) or something, I didn’t watch because I have a hard time getting into things with a primarily YA cast.
Midnight club was fun and did some interesting things with horror tropes as storytelling devices but it leaves a lot of stuff unresolved and apparently isn’t getting a second second so probably not worth it
The Midnight Club was still good, just less straight horror than some of his other stuff. In some ways it ending thinking it would get a 2nd season still works, part of dying is the fact that there’s some storylines and things you’ll never find out the end of or the truth of. Though apparently in season 2 the teen with AIDS would have lived long enough to start the meds for that and would also have gotten to live so that might have been nice
I like that it seems to be a mash up of all Poe’s short stories/poems. In this trailer alone, we have references to Masque of the Red Death, The Raven, and The Pit and the Pendulum (along with it’s titular story).
It will be hard to top Midnight Mass but this looks like a lot of fun!
Cool!
Now would someone please convince Flannagan to attempt to adapt House of Leaves. I know it seems impossible but he was successful in marrying King’s The Shining with Kubrick’s The Shining in Doctor Sleep and that seemed impossible too.
I really hope Flanagan eases up on the monologues.
Anyone who puts Carla Gugino on my screen is a hero in my book.
Classic Poe
I loved the Midnight Club, I know it was considered a flop, but I like it the best. The others are just too sickly sentimental.
I’ve only seen Hill House and Bly Manor, but I do agree the former is definitely on the sickly sentimental side. The finale was a very tacked-on contrast to the rest of the series. The latter was more balanced in its melancholy and satisfactory finality despite its own missteps.
it’s gotta be Midnight Mass for me. finally a bloody ending!
Blegh, it all sounds so clunky and obvious
This looks a lot sassier than I was expecting. Mike Flanagan by way of Ryan Murphy?
RODERICK USHERLet’s all enjoy this cask of Amontillado, but first, has anyone seen my black cat? I think I can hear its telltale heartbeat somewhere under the floorboards . . .
This dude’s work sucks. Midnight Mass was a Salem’s Lot ripoff. And an abject mess.