This review series was requested by Carson Rebel. Many thanks to Carson for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.
Other Reviews in This Series --- Assume Spoilers
The Bent Neck Lady
We've seen Luke's side of the story: him and Nelly against the world. Nobody listens, nobody understands, nobody can see what they see. But at least they have each other.
Episode 5 treads similar ground to Episode 4: a spirit-sensitive twin bereft of their support system struggles to keep their head afloat in the onslaught of pain that is life. This could have felt redundant, but Flanagan and co. are wise to orient this episode around a key difference... these twins are not equally yoked. They may have been once, but the house and their history have come between them. Luke's coping mechanism leaves no room for his sister, as we see in a heartbreaking scene of Luke pathetically bullying Nelly into buying him heroin on the way to rehab. This is a betrayal of the highest order. It is also a harder and better scene than Luke's struggles with substance abuse in his own episode. Maybe it hurts more seeing addiction through the eyes of a loved one.
Nelly, like Luke, is suffering from twin separation. She, like Luke, has found a surrogate of her own: her loving husband Arthur. He is a sleep therapist, she's been suffering night terrors, can I make it any more obvious? From there we get a whirlwind montage of their courtship. Flanagan, as usual, has a knack for showing the passing effects of time. We get just enough of the relationship to believe that Nell is capable of settling into a comfortable life rhythm. The sequence also hints at codependency without spelling it out for us the way last episode did.
It makes sense that Nell would be drawn to someone who has the answers to her debilitating night terrors, especially if that person is going to be in bed with her during her darkest moments. What seems like a match made in heaven is actually a relationship built around her sickness, and the momentary release thereof. This is the sort of thing that breeds resentment given some time. Nell's husband is snatched away before she can learn this. Just as Luke was punished for his codependency, so too is she. Arthur has a fatal aneurysm during one of her night terrors; the Bent Neck Lady looks on. This lets Nell cope by blaming something external for this freak accident, while paradoxically blaming herself for putting her husband in harm's way.
As a side note, "The Haunting of Hill House" is unmistakably a white story about a white family made by white artists. "Hill House" doesn't pretend otherwise, which is somewhat refreshing. Too many talented actors get shoehorned into flawless characters with dead end arcs for the sake of diversity. I have noticed, though, that "Hill House" makes a point of casting POC actors, especially Black actors, in prominent supporting roles every episode. The woman with the ghost story in episode 1, Shirley's husband, the interracial family of episode 3, Luke's addiction counselor. Nelly's husband makes for the third interracial relationship of the series, all operating at varying degrees of healthiness, and none of which beg for our attention and approval.
COME HOME NELL. The writing is on the wall, as they say, this time literally. Wallpaper is pulled aside to reveal this ominous message, as if Nell were always destined to be the sacrifice this house demands. "[The house is] just a carcass in the woods," these characters wish they could believe. But when Nelly returns to the point of trauma, she gets a harsh lesson in Nachträglichkeit. Retroactivity.
The ghosts welcome her back with open arms. This sequence crescendos with a sign of acceptance from her mother: the locket that was promised, with a picture of each twin on the inside. This passing of memento from mother to child tightens the noose of generational illness, but there is an additional twist of the knife... the emblem hearkens to the relationship between Nell and Luke that was so brutally rent asunder earlier that episode.
I'm dumb about twists sometimes. I like to watch the story spool out without guessing at what's around the corner, so when I first saw the ending of this episode-- a hanging Nell occupying the role of the Bent Neck Lady-- I was suitably twisted. I don't imagine it would be that difficult to anticipate; Flanagan hides the clues in plain sight, including a very intentional geometric relationship between Nell and the specter. However, like all good twists, this one doesn't require surprise to function. It derives its power from the set-up, the symmetry, the imagery. Nell falls from the balcony, her neck breaking, and she falls, and she falls, and she falls, each time plunging into the perspective of the Bent Neck Lady in a scene we've experienced before. It's almost like clicking through the slides of an old projector-- if instead of vacation photos, it was all the worst moments of your life, and you relived them with each and every click, unable to look away.
This sequence is, I think, the second great iconic "Hill House" moment of the series. A woman punished in the worst way imaginable for something that she couldn't control. All she can do now is reflect, and try to help her loved ones avoid her fate.
8 / 10
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