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Surprised there hasn't been much mention of all the background ghosts. Then again, I don't think most of these would get noticed unless you are deliberately looking for them due to them not moving, blending in with the background, and being on screen for very short periods of time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmE4M6puY-4
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Oct 29, 2018 16:31
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I was pretty surprised people came out of the ending thinking it was happy. Nell's face as Hugh walked into the red room looked devastated. And Liv's eyes were downright predatory as she stared at Steve. I took Steve's "and it was all okay after that" narration as him taking up Hugh's role of lying to protect everyone from the truth. I mean, Hugh basically told him that the house and his promise were Steve's now, and Steve's arc really seems to be about finding out why his dad did what he did, understanding it, and taking over. I can't see the Dudley's ending as happy either. They lost both of their children, and the house used it to tie them there, to keep them from ever leaving, to make sure that one day they would come there to die and join the souls it's swallowed.
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Oct 29, 2018 16:42
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Guiness13 posted:I was pretty surprised people came out of the ending thinking it was happy. Nell's face as Hugh walked into the red room looked devastated. And Liv's eyes were downright predatory as she stared at Steve. I took Steve's "and it was all okay after that" narration as him taking up Hugh's role of lying to protect everyone from the truth. I mean, Hugh basically told him that the house and his promise were Steve's now, and Steve's arc really seems to be about finding out why his dad did what he did, understanding it, and taking over. This might what they wanted it to feel like, but the way it's shown doesn't make that super clear. Nell - Gets to say goodbye to her siblings, says that time isn't linear and that she isn't gone from their lives. Seems almost at peace with what has happened to her. She does look haunted in that final scene a bit, but with the room brightly lit white it's a mix bag of imagery. Hugh - Sacrifices himself to spend eternity with his wife, convincing her that letting the kids go isn't a bad thing. We last see him walking into a white lit red room as his younger self and embracing his wife and daughter. Liv - Hugh convinces her not to kill the rest of their kids and that he'll stay with her. Again, we last see her in the white light version of that room Dudley's - Other than being tied to the house the rest of their lives, there's no real time it's shown to be a negative thing for them. They seemed to age a lot before they died and the only time we saw any of their ghost forms they were normal looking, not decayed. The final scene in the house would be way more obviously bad if we last see Liv and Nell as their decayed forms and if the room didn't look like a stereotypical heaven. Or if we didn't get the happy scene of Mrs. Dudley dying in the house, only to appear as a ghost with her dead baby and dead girl, looking happy. The ending is "happy" overall no matter what though, the remaining kids get away and are able to confront the issues that have haunted them all their lives (Steven gets back with his wife and agrees to have kids, Shirley confesses to her husband and they move on, Luke is 2 years clean, Theo moves out on her own and gives up her gloves). The only interpretation is whether or not the ghosts live tortured existences for the rest of time, or if they can choose to just live out a happy existence with their loved ones that are also there.
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Oct 29, 2018 16:57
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Cat Army
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Waltzing Along posted:Surprised there hasn't been much mention of all the background ghosts. Then again, I don't think most of these would get noticed unless you are deliberately looking for them due to them not moving, blending in with the background, and being on screen for very short periods of time: I mentioned them but my uh...more controversial opinions became the subject of conversation.
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Oct 29, 2018 17:48
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Guiness13 posted:I was pretty surprised people came out of the ending thinking it was happy. Nell's face as Hugh walked into the red room looked devastated. And Liv's eyes were downright predatory as she stared at Steve. I took Steve's "and it was all okay after that" narration as him taking up Hugh's role of lying to protect everyone from the truth. I mean, Hugh basically told him that the house and his promise were Steve's now, and Steve's arc really seems to be about finding out why his dad did what he did, understanding it, and taking over. Exactly I really don't see how it's a happy ending at all. The show has multiple lines about the predatory nature of the house. It shows the desiccated ghosts and cobwebbed abandoned halls. There's nothing happy about that house. It exacerbated the mental illnesses in the Crain family, lured them back, caught 3 of them, and got the Dudleys too. The happy afterlife is all a lure for a soul trap.
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Oct 29, 2018 18:16
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I really liked this show once I got over how unsubtle and unambiguous it is with it's supernatural spooks. Nell's episode hit home for me just because I've known a few people who basically acted a lot like she did after going through their own tragedies. I really liked the house set, and how you can kinda start mapping it out in your head after a while. This sounds like an odd thing to praise but they really carried over the tone of the bickering scenes from the book, so that's fun. I think I'd characterize the ending as "bittersweet" more than happy or sad. The House definitely gets a meal, but in all that Liv and the dad get to be together again, the Dudleys to stay with their little girl, and the surviving Crains are on their way to fixing their lives a bit. That said I wouldn't kick a scene where Luke drives up to Hill House with a bulldozer out of bed.
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Oct 29, 2018 20:28
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As someone who suffers from sleep paralysis with pretty similar symptoms that episode freaked me out more than a little bit.
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Oct 29, 2018 21:12
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I don't think anyone has mentioned it but my God were Livs clothes just dreamy. I particularly liked the velvet dress, and the contrast of her plain visiting her sister outfit
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Oct 29, 2018 21:50
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Sloth Life posted:I don't think anyone has mentioned it but my God were Livs clothes just dreamy. I particularly liked the velvet dress, and the contrast of her plain visiting her sister outfit At some point I burst out with something like "goddamn, how many awesome bathrobes that I want does this woman have?!?"
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Oct 29, 2018 23:05
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Akuma posted:As someone who suffers from sleep paralysis with pretty similar symptoms that episode freaked me out more than a little bit. Same, was probably the most uncomfortable part for me. It was really accurate to my own experiences, except that I've always hallucinated anyone trying to wake me as something terrifying.
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Oct 30, 2018 00:07
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Doltos posted:Exactly I really don't see how it's a happy ending at all. The show has multiple lines about the predatory nature of the house. It shows the desiccated ghosts and cobwebbed abandoned halls. There's nothing happy about that house. It exacerbated the mental illnesses in the Crain family, lured them back, caught 3 of them, and got the Dudleys too. The happy afterlife is all a lure for a soul trap. Yes. I felt this way, as well. Its whole point is to mine people's weaknesses and gaslight them into killing themselves. Making an afterlife there look super pleasant is perfectly consistent with why it's evil. It wasn't clear to me if the ghosts were merely selective about who they appeared to, or if it's just the Shining thing some of the Crains seem to have. Did Steve and Shirley not see things because the ghosts didn't give a poo poo about them, or were they just less attractive targets because they didn't have weird hyper-sensory powers? (Or just oblivious, and poo poo was happening around them constantly.) I really hope this show does an anthology thing, though. I'm honestly not that interested in more Hill House, be it about the Crains or the Hills or anyone. I'd just like to see this stylistic approach brought to different horror narratives. Pick a different haunted site, develop different characters, explore new themes. Do something with a Southern plantation, a Spanish mission, reservation lands, a haunted ship, whatever.
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Oct 30, 2018 01:39
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The last ten minutes of the show contain all the cinematic cues of a happy ending including slow piano music, an uplifting monologue, depictions of all the living characters resolving their traumas, and all the dead characters reuniting in their young, untainted bodies in a bright, white afterlife. The ending sucks by implication but the show's makers clearly want to make you feel like everything worked out in the end. It's why everyone is complaining about how tonally incongruent it is to the rest of the series.
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Oct 30, 2018 02:01
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Yeah, regardless of the implications and deeper meanings of the ending, the tone of the last 10 minutes was such a total 180 from the rest of the show that it literally made me sit there and stare at the screen for a few breaths when it cut to credits, and finally just go "what?"
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Oct 30, 2018 02:06
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The original ending would have been far better.
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Oct 30, 2018 02:12
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the first episode of this show was great and ultimately I kinda wish I had just stopped there. the "whatever walks here, walks together" line at the very end actually made me mad 
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Oct 30, 2018 03:13
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The introduction of Poppy is where I feel the show jumped the shark. If they just cut the show after the scary version grabbed Luke and gave us a Poochy style "sadly everyone died" screen I would have been happier.
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Oct 30, 2018 04:23
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So many overwrought speeches and lines in that last episode it was painful.
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Oct 30, 2018 14:05
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Throw me in the bad ending boat. Too much of a tonal shift. It would have worked if the show had started in a similar place and then descended but nope. Just didn't work for me. There were allusions to Steve doing research on the house, iirc. The show needed more about the house. Leaving it a total mystery was ultimately unsatisfying. E: a couple things I didn't see mentioned 1 - Where did Luke get the heroin? He was clean. He wouldn't have bought any or had any on him after the mugging. So where did it come from? There was a shot that seemed to indicate he had shot up the rat poison, but I'm pretty sure that would have killed him for sure. But again, where did the needle come from? 2 - Hugh opened the red room. Obvious, I know, but I pointed it out to my gf while watching. "Did you see that Hugh is the one who opened the red room? That means he isn't leaving the house." "Why do you say that?" "Because he is the one who opened the door. It wasn't Liv." Anyway, Liv refusing to open it shows that she still wasn't willing to change. She was just as crazy as Poppy. Not sure if Poppy was evil so much as crazy and lonely and convinced that she was in the right. Waltzing Along fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 14:20
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So a theory that Flannigan confirmed about why Shirley loving sucks, is that the kids are all the 5 stages of grief. Steve- Denial Shirley- Anger Theo- Bargaining Luke- Depression Nell- Acceptance
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Oct 30, 2018 16:28
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Akuma posted:As someone who suffers from sleep paralysis with pretty similar symptoms that episode freaked me out more than a little bit. Hey sleep paralysis buddy! I get it very rarely and it's almost always a "shadow person" I see so yeah that struck a nerve.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:44
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At the end of ep 8 I wasn't sure if Luke actually lit the house on fire and just didn't see it--like how Nell put a noose around her neck without noticing--and I thought that was sort of a cool mystery as to whether or not the ghosts were real or if Luke was just burning to death, but then episode 9 very quickly explains "no no the ghosts are DEFINITELY real, and the house is magically fireproof" Also I thought it wasn't heroin, but rat poison that Luke was injected with, since that's Liv's uh...weapon of choice. Hence the foaming at the mouth and such.
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Oct 30, 2018 16:55
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:So a theory that Flannigan confirmed about why Shirley loving sucks, is that the kids are all the 5 stages of grief. Ahhh that's stupid. No wonder Shirley's character was so off beat and out of place.
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Oct 30, 2018 17:07
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Xad posted:At the end of ep 8 I wasn't sure if Luke actually lit the house on fire and just didn't see it--like how Nell put a noose around her neck without noticing--and I thought that was sort of a cool mystery as to whether or not the ghosts were real or if Luke was just burning to death, but then episode 9 very quickly explains "no no the ghosts are DEFINITELY real, and the house is magically fireproof" I mean ghosts are pretty real right off the bat. There's one dancin around that first scene.
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Oct 30, 2018 18:32
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Doltos posted:Ahhh that's stupid. No wonder Shirley's character was so off beat and out of place. Are you an only child or the youngest because I feel like it's easier to relate to Shirley if you've been in a situation where your parents aren't around and now you, as the oldest/older child, have to take responsibility for your siblings. I didn't find her off beat or out of place at all, she's been forced to be the matriarch of her family since her mother is dead, her father was gone for a large part of her life, and her older brother wants nothing to do with his siblings outside of profiting from their family trauma. e: She's also the only one with a family of her own, yet she still feels she has to be responsible for everyone else. Resentment leads to anger. ONE YEAR LATER fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Oct 30, 2018 |
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Oct 30, 2018 18:39
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KillerQueen posted:I mean ghosts are pretty real right off the bat. There's one dancin around that first scene. It's not obvious if the ghosts are real or not at first. Not until episode 8 I think is when the house/ghosts show to have actual powers. I don't remember an instance where more than one person sees a ghost at a time, and you never witness a ghost actually touching/hurting a person until ep. 8. I was in real doubt that the ghosts actually existed up until that point.
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Oct 30, 2018 18:55
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*poses as if in deep thought* "a ghost is a wish, or a regret, or a dream" Or it's an actual ghost that tears your PJs apart and makes you go insane.
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Oct 30, 2018 19:06
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:Are you an only child or the youngest because I feel like it's easier to relate to Shirley if you've been in a situation where your parents aren't around and now you, as the oldest/older child, have to take responsibility for your siblings. I didn't find her off beat or out of place at all, she's been forced to be the matriarch of her family since her mother is dead, her father was gone for a large part of her life, and her older brother wants nothing to do with his siblings outside of profiting from their family trauma. Second youngest but I meant more that her childhood character background didn't relate at all to who she was as an adult besides her occupation. All the other children's stories related to their adult stories except Shirley. The character itself wasn't bad, it's just that her childhood flashback showed her as a nice kid who got hosed up by seeing a bug crawl out of a dead kittens mouth. Going by the other four back stories she should have grown up to be timid or a nervous wreck or something. Instead she was just really, really mean.
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Oct 30, 2018 20:39
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Doltos posted:Going by the other four back stories she should have grown up to be timid or a nervous wreck or something. Instead she was just really, really mean. Maybe, yeah. My main takeaways from Shirley's childhood were 1) caretaking impulses from the kittens, and 2) an obsession with superficially "fixing" unfixable problems. Obviously, those things are true of her job, but you'd think that would inform her personality in general. So, maybe not timid, but more conciliatory or delusional about how happy or functional the family is. Though, I don't think it's nonsensical she'd be blunt and mean; she has reasons to be. It just felt unearned, especially compared to Theo who's also many of those things, but with way more reasons why.
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Oct 31, 2018 01:01
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Waltzing Along posted:Throw me in the bad ending boat. Too much of a tonal shift. It would have worked if the show had started in a similar place and then descended but nope. Just didn't work for me. There were allusions to Steve doing research on the house, iirc. The show needed more about the house. Leaving it a total mystery was ultimately unsatisfying. Yeah, I don't think it was heroin. Or was there even a needle? The needle may have been imaginary, and his condition may have been the house. Poppy and Liv were both crazy. Crazy and undead is a helluva drug. Of course there's also the question of how much of what we saw was Poppy, and how much of it was an avatar of the house luring people in. Unless all those ghosts are post-Poppy, it wasn't her that trapped them there. The only ones she's responsible for that we know of for sure are the Crains, the Dudleys (well Mr and Mrs. were voluntary), and probably her husband. Maybe Hazel, but maybe Hazel just had the bad luck to die there.
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Oct 31, 2018 01:24
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Xealot posted:Maybe, yeah. My main takeaways from Shirley's childhood were 1) caretaking impulses from the kittens, and 2) an obsession with superficially "fixing" unfixable problems. Obviously, those things are true of her job, but you'd think that would inform her personality in general. So, maybe not timid, but more conciliatory or delusional about how happy or functional the family is. I'm not sure if was nonsensical per se I just think that either her childhood needed to be fixed to reflect how she acts as an adult, have her adulthood fixed to reflect how she acts as a child, or to not have the other four kids have such direct correlation between their flashbacks and who they are now. Like you said she has reasons to be blunt and mean, but it feels like it has nothing to do with her childhood which is what the show was doing for the other siblings.
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Oct 31, 2018 01:51
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Just realized that, canonically, Nell's funeral happens tomorrow.
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Oct 31, 2018 03:53
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Gaunab posted:The Haunting of Hill House(not the House on Haunted Hill, or the Haunting of Hell House)  This whole time I thought it was a take on Hell House, with which it shares a few significant spoilers and a lot of thematic consistency. I'm pretty sure that "some houses born bad" line appears in both as well.
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Oct 31, 2018 13:00
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https://twitter.com/ybbaaabby/status/1057496321211404289
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Oct 31, 2018 13:24
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I feel like every show does that. It's like empty coffee cups, or characters leaving at the end of conversations.
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Oct 31, 2018 14:26
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"One beer, please"
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Oct 31, 2018 14:51
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:"One beer, please" Hahaha they just did that in an episode of Mr. Mercedes, two guys walk into the bar and one says "Two beers please". I wanted the bartender to say "Uhhh maybe a bit more specific, guys?" I know they can't for advertising sakes, but I'd rather it just have them sitting down and the bartender bringing the beers as if they ordered them off screen.
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Oct 31, 2018 15:26
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What about in crime procedural type shows? Writer writes a paragraph of exposition. Breaks it up and has every character in the screen say one line so that no one is left out. It's pretty stupid. John: He went to the bank. Mary: Where he did a withdrawal. Liz: From his savings account. Paul: But then he tipped over a trash can. Sam: And ate half a snickers bar that someone had thrown away.
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Oct 31, 2018 15:38
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moths posted:
And there's a difference between the book Hell House, the movie The Legend of Hell House, and the movie The Haunting of Hell House.
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Oct 31, 2018 15:50
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'A clenched fist with hair' is probably my favorite line in the series.
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Oct 31, 2018 18:00
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ulex minor posted:*poses as if in deep thought* "a ghost is a wish, or a regret, or a dream" It’s all of the above. The house pulls those wishes, regrets and dreams out of you and uses it against you. Doltos posted:Second youngest but I meant more that her childhood character background didn't relate at all to who she was as an adult besides her occupation. All the other children's stories related to their adult stories except Shirley. The character itself wasn't bad, it's just that her childhood flashback showed her as a nice kid who got hosed up by seeing a bug crawl out of a dead kittens mouth. Going by the other four back stories she should have grown up to be timid or a nervous wreck or something. Instead she was just really, really mean. The parents mention several times that Shirley is ridged, uptight and has a stick up her rear end. Both during flashbacks and during the adult timeline. I wonder if Nell and Luke got more of the ghostly poo poo because they are younger and more prone to flights of fancy. The other three kids are older and more likely to try to rationalize things.
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Oct 31, 2018 19:30
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