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I wasn't a fan of this show, I'm afraid. I'll go through my reasons and remember it's fine to disagree: - The bits of Jackson-direct dialogue were badly at odds with the new stuff. I love the way Jackson writes. She has a poetic, daydreamy flourish to her writing. It got clipped up and pushed into parts of the script next to lines like, "It never occurs to them you'll be in this treehouse. You know, the one Dad built for you." The seams were distractingly apparent. ESPECIALLY in the last episode where a lot of the monolgues were entirely non-Jackson. Related to this is that the book is from Eleanor's POV and Eleanor has a very childlike, fantastic way of looking at things. She's full of romance and wonder over the mundane because the mundane is all she has to fantasize over. So it's weird see beleagured, no-nonsense characters go off on these monologues full of gentle, romantic ideations that don't really sound like words or thoughts befitting them. - Jump scares. In my book, it's a hard cut accompanied by an overly-loud musical sting. There were a lot and I got startled, but I also get startled when someone opens my office door. My office is not scary and neither is a loud noise. - God, I didn't like these people. When they were at the wake and Theo was jumping all over why Steve's wife wasn't there, I expected someone to remind her that their dead sister's dead body is in the next goddamn room and maybe this doesn't matter right now, but no one did. And then they snapped at their dad for struggling with his words and made snarky comments about how Luke's gonna gently caress this up too, I bet! They just nitpicked each other until Nell's body got knocked onto the loving floor and they were reminded oh yeah, this is my dead goddamn sister's wake. AND WHAT DID YOUR POOR SISTER EVER DO TO YOU, HUGH? RAISED YOUR FIVE loving KIDS, THAT'S WHAT. LET HER GRIEVE, SHITHOLE. TWAT. - The red room was underwhelming and not really connected meaningfully to the young Theo/Nell/Shirley interaction. - I like the imagery of the cane man! I wish they didn't have the "go back and look under the bed" bit. The idea of a floating corpse going down the hall, checking the rooms at night is great because there's so much you don't know and have to be worried about. When he found Luke, nothing really happened. It didn't attack him like the dumb waiter thing or... anything, really. The consequence of being caught was that Luke was scared, but more. - I didn't like the ghosts being characters. Humanizing them gave you expectations for them and establishing knowns for your monsters makes them less threatening. Ghosts are scary because they represent so much of the unknown. You became less afraid of Santi in The Devil's Backbone when you learned his story. You became more afraid of Samara in The Ring when you learned her backstory didn't matter and you had wrongfully tried to apply humanity to something that lacked it. I know Grannie ghost is chill and Poppy lies because they flat-out tell us that, and now I'm removed from sympathizing with Liv. And Poppy showed up like a Big Bad, just in the next to last episode with no foreshadowing. - The last episode is anime. When I was fifteen, I watched Inu-Yasha and there was an episode like this. All the characters get trapped in a magic miasma the villain makes and they hallucinate their worst nightmares while vines try to consume them. Only through the power of friendship and love are they able to break away from the spell, and also like Nell one of them has special powers to help everyone else snap out of it. That poo poo flew when I was fifteen, dammit, but now I'm thirty and I should not be thinking about Inu-Yasha, Hill House! - Agreeing that the happy ending tone was bad, and it was a happy ending. The dialogue might tell me Megan Fox is not a sex object, Micheal Bay, but you nullify it when you jam the camera up her rear end. You may say it's a trap ending, but the camerawork, editing, audio, lighting, acting and dialogue are all saying it's happy. If you wanted to make me think otherwise, you would have made even just one of those things dissonant. - Abigail was a pointless twist and pretty unnecessary as a character. But book reference, I guess. - And last one is a nitpick. Like, I know it's a nitpick and it's really unfair. But that is not how someone dies from rat poison. It is so much longer and it is so much worse. And I know exactly why they had to shorthand it because I also know this is an unfair gripe. I just noticed. That was a longer post than I meant to make it. Also I took some Benadryl and I'm passing out now. G'night!
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Nov 3, 2018 09:30
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 03:29 |
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