A Superb Adaptation
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Overall9
Ever since the early 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe has captured the imagination of untold millions with his tales of suspense and horror. Unfortunately, while he remains one of the authors with the most film and television adaptations (along with the likes of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen), most of the attempts have been largely forgettable fare. Notable exceptions being several of Roger Corman’s 1960-1964 efforts.
But in the midst of this 2023 Halloween season, Netflix’s limited series “The Fall of the House of Usher” is not only a breath of fresh air in being a very solid horror series, it showcases a wide range of Poe’s amazing writing.
The series is helmed by showrunner/writer/director Mike Flanagan (the same fellow who brought us Netflix’s other horror standouts, including “The Haunting of Hill House,” “Bly Manor,” “Midnight Mass,” and “The Midnight Club“). The series is very much an adaptation, shifting the story from the turn of the 19th century to the modern day. Usher family patriarch Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) sits in a decrepit house telling his “confession” of his and his family’s myriad sins to Police Investigator C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly). It is revealed that his family has been experiencing a series of horrible deaths among its’ members, with Roderick’s children dying off, each seemingly accidental and unrelated.
As he tells his tale, the tension and dread deepens. Part of the inspiration of this particular adaptation is that it’s not only the story of Usher, but each episode also has the title and story beats of a different Poe tale. And at various points, characters will recite pieces of Poe’s poetry. It feels almost as if Flanagan has managed to pull off something akin to a jukebox musical (and a successful one, like “Mamma Mia“). The various elements might have felt overly forced in other cases, but here everything from the individual tales to the overarching Usher storyline all come together in a deeply disturbing tale of Billionaire greed, willful blindness to the harm caused by runaway ambition, and the fact that when the time comes, all debts will be called in.
The individual character performances are also outstanding, with Mark Hamill gives one of his best performances as the Usher family’s problem fixer and lawyer, Arthur Pym. So often actors can be seen as themselves first, and their characters second. In Usher, Hamill all but vanishes into the dark and ominous character, who even the Usher family members call him the Pym Reaper. “Battlestar Galactica‘s” Michael Trucco plays Rufus Wilmot Griswold, and Mary McDonnell is Madeline Usher. Madeline is Roderick’s twin sister, and Griswold is Roderick’s predecessor as CEO at Fortunado Pharmaceuticals.
Trucco’s Griswold is a dark and driven CEO, who manages to ensure that Roderick’s ambition is whipped into a flame to deadly results. Flanagan is clearly more than a passing fan of Poe’s, given that Griswold’s own name, while not part of the Usher tale, was a real-world contemporary writer to Poe, and who was responsible for the obituary which was written on Poe’s death.
The weaving in of the poetry and various stories causes the various characters to have substantially more depth than in most random seasonal horror fare. It moves along well, and doesn’t get bogged down or feel particularly dragged out.
If you are a fan of horror or thrillers and can handle some solid jump scares, then do yourself a favor and watch “Fall of the House of Usher” on Netflix. It is more than worth the time spent, and you’ll find yourself wanting to go back and revisit the old stories, and that’s no small feat.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
