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
Silence Lay Steadily
The finale begins with a revelation: the room behind the red door was not unattainable, after all. It is the promise of attainment. Each child spent time in the red room, each within their own personal safe space. The knockings and scrapings and hauntings were not malicious ghosts, but each other experienced through a shroud of perspectival trickery. The red room channels the power of wish fulfillment, and a space to be alone is certainly a common wish in a family of seven!
"A ghost is a wish." Trapped within their former safe space, each living Crain sibling experiences the sordid side of fantasy. The house spoonfeeds them visions of their deepest desires as it feeds. The past creeps in, and it takes a herculean effort to stay present.
Just as Olivia failed to have a relationship with lack and loss, the house offers her children images that balm the pain. We so desperately want to believe in easy fixes. This is what Hugh got wrong; that which is broken cannot be fixed. That which is dirty cannot become clean.
This is no more apparent than in the cold fact that Olivia is a murderer. The dirtiest trick episode 10 plays on us is revealing that the little poisoned girl is no imaginary friend, but the daughter of the groundskeepers. The Dudleys have long felt like an appendage of the show. I've barely even mentioned them in these reviews. Now, suddenly, they are folded directly into the violent family dynamic. One can see why they needed to be kept at arms' length until now for plot purposes, but it stands as a missed opportunity.
At any rate, this killing is a wound that will never heal. How can anyone move on from that? Olivia chose not to. Now, a generation later, it's time for her children to decide.
All the ingredients are here for a strong finale. The choice to reckon with the siblings' fantasies rather than go ghost hunting is an inspired and disciplined one. But even if you're on board for that subversive climax, the final episode can't help but feel like a letdown. The show ends with its weakest material.
The Crains (minus Hugh) escape from the property; the last we see of them is a few scenelets followed by a montage. Each of them works on their baggage with honesty and courage. On a character level, some of these moments work better than others. I hate Shirley's scene with her husband in which she tells him about the affair. "I'm asking you to love me hard, for the next few minutes, and it might be the hardest thing you ever have to do." That's a hell of an ask after the way she treated him for a similar sin earlier this season. The ultimatum doesn't sit well with me, and that unacknowledged hypocrisy makes me wonder how much she's really learned at all.
I've mentioned a few times Flanagan's proclivity for tying together his ideas with pristine bows. This is not a good thing or a bad thing! It works beautifully in the unparalleled "Wake" episode. Here, it feels too rushed, too clean, as if they thwarted the house and had to race to the finish line before anyone lost interest. The one-two punch of the dead creating family at Hill House and the living creating family out in the world is just a little too treacly.
So much of whether or not these narrative moments work comes down to one single choice. I'm talking about the song.
I have yet to mention Andy Grush and Taylor Stewart's music for "Hill House," a grievous oversight. It's outstanding. The tinkling piano motif that pervades the score is melancholy beyond a simple tearjerker. There's thoughtfulness to it, a suggestion of emotional work yet to be done. It asks you to process what you're seeing, not just feel it, not just moralize it. It knows when to drive home the point and when to get out of the way, often the difference between cliché and resonant truth.
All that gets abandoned for soulful acoustic singer-songwriter nonsense. It obliterates the immersion as it begs us to Feel Feelings about what's going on. I cannot understand it. After an entire season of discipline and insight, how do you let the worst choice of all be the taste left in our mouth?
Flanagan has been walking a high wire act this season, and this song tackles him off the wire. Collapsing the nuances of inherited trauma into "they're gonna be okay!" isn't inherently a bad idea, but it doesn't work here. All the more pity that the final line spoken in the show is a bastardization of the very first line, one quoted directly from Shirley Jackson. Steven warmly intones his revision: "Those who walk here.......... walk together." What a retreat for a show so willing to look at the bleakness of family! What a way to oversimplify a thesis statement! What a way to disrespect the morbidity of Jackson's work!
The great tragedy of that ending is also the tragedy of this review series; it feels bad to go out on a sour note. The ending of an artwork is its quilting point, the stitch that sets the significance of all that came before. But I do not think that this ending ruins the show, nor does it mean Flanagan and co. didn't understand their material. They just got sloppy. "The Haunting of Hill House" still stands as one of the towering achievements of horror television. Horror is not just a way to make us jumpy for a while-- it can lay bare the deep howling of the soul. Flanagan's soul howls about family, trauma, and the horror above all horrors that is loving another person.
7 / 10
No comments:
Post a Comment