The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix Miniseries)

The Fall of the House of Usher

Genre: Horror

Showrunner: Mike Flanagan

Released: 2023

     Edgar Allen Poe stands alongside H.P. Lovecraft as both an exemplar and standard bearer of the subgenre of gothic horror. His poems and short stories are drenched in a luscious, macabre atmosphere and complemented by vivid, flowing prose. His bibliography is extensive, as is his impact on pop culture, so it makes sense that pop culture continues to propagate his works almost two hundred years later. The latest advance in this program of cultural domination was Netflix's The Fall of the House of Usher, a miniseries created by rising horror star Mike Flanagan. Usher is not a direct adaptation of any one Poe story or poem, rather it is a new story set in the current day that draws characters, plot points, and motifs from across his works to create a kind of greatest-hits compendium of all things E.A.P. 

     What it also is is disappointing, especially for a Poe fan like myself. It's hard to point out anything egregiously wrong with the show (just as it's hard to single out anything particularly impressive), but a general atmosphere of genericism and missed potential pervades the show, particularly as it relates to tone. In order to get a sense of what I mean, it may be necessary that the reader has some baseline understanding of Poe's style and, indeed, the gothic horror style itself. Gothic horror doesn't rely on graphic kills, bloody violence, or shrieking, over the top antagonists. Authors like Poe aren't trying to shock or disgust the audience, they're first and foremost trying to establish a mood, an eerie, oppressive, quiet kind of fear that comes from scraping up against some miniscule patch of something ancient, cosmic, and incomprehensible. 

     The Fall of the House of Usher . . . doesn't do that. It follows Roderick Usher and his scions, here reimagined as an obvious stand-in for the Sackler family complete with an alleged miracle drug that they continue to peddle despite in-depth knowledge of the drug's addictive properties. It's not just medical malpractice, however, the Usher clan has a finger in every antagonist pie you can bake: inhumane animal experiments, abusive relationships, influence purchasing, irresponsible medical devices, the list is as extensive as it is underdeveloped. Most episodes boil down to one of the Usher kids being cartoon bad guys before the show's avatar of (un)holy justice strikes them down after delivering a LENTGHY monologue explaining for no one's benefit but the audience why, exactly, performing unethical experiments on monkeys is uncool. Thanks, show, I already had that one pretty much figured out.

     Aside from being preachy and failing to contribute anything new or interesting to the discourse surrounding these issues, the fact that many of the characters are limited to a single episode taking cursory looks at their backstories and motivations leads to that underdevelopment problem I mentioned. The show is so determined to kill off an Usher an episode, and to ensure each Usher is fitted neatly into an easily recognizable and hateable box before they're ushered (lol) off this mortal coil that each death ends up feeling flat and underwhelming. There's no sense of tragedy to this family of desperate daddy-pleasers nor really much catharsis at their comeuppances. The problem is that the show is more than content to color diligently inside the lines of each of its hot button topics, leaving no room for growth or development; you can see the outlines of the picture from the moment the writers pick up a brush so who cares what colors they use, especially when their hues of choice are all so decidedly monochromatic?

     This feeling extends to the show's overarching . . . I struggle to call her an antagonist because we're clearly meant to be rooting for her, so let's call her the show's overarching foil. Death, the devil, the wizard, whatever she's meant to be she's painfully uninteresting as a threat. Far too much about her is explained for her to retain any sense of mystery or dread, and she never really does anything that creepy or cool. She teleports around, she can't be killed, she can kinda-sorta shapeshift, that's it. Cthulhu this is not, she's not even the Masque of the Red Death, she's a generic being striking generically Faustian bargains with generically shortsighted criminals and whose debts come due in generically violent ends. More than anything I think we just see way too much of her and get much too strong of a sense of her history and abilities for her to have that sense of terrified awe that attends monsters like the ones mentioned above. 

     Performances are decent across the board and it's shot decently well albeit soaked in drab, gray colors and flat, pale lighting, but none of this is enough to warrant blowing eight hours on such a rote, predictable, and tragic misapplication of Poe's works and style. 

D