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We finished watching The Haunting of Hill House last night, and DAMN. It was a very good "inspired by the novella" treatment, and I now completely understand why people who watched it first were baffled and a bit betrayed by The Haunting of Bly Manor. Bly Manor is, as I said, a gothic romance with some ghosts. Hill House is a gothic horror with really effective ghosts.
I was delighted by the horror/ghost elements, even if they got me with a bunch of the jump scares. Each one of those jump scares were appropriate to the context of the story and not just cheap triggers for screams from the audience, which I always approve of. But the show was still a hard thing to watch for me, for reasons relating to my own flavor of crazycakes.
- A dysfunctional family where people don't talk about things because they want to protect everyone else from worrying.
- The mother suffers from hellacious migraines, increasing nightmares, increasing stress, and an increasing sense of reality getting "soft" around the edges.
- Unreliable narrators ahoy!
- Supernatural elements that may or may not be real, see the previous two points.
Those things are tailor-made to hit my buttons. Yes, right down to the sense of reality being "soft". Let me put it this way: I read "Pickman's Model" by Lovecraft at waaaaaay too young an age.
So last night as we were watching, the Madwoman wandered downstairs to make her coffee. We paused the show, and commented that she must have gone to bed early, because we hadn't seen her all day.
"No", she said.
"But we were only out of the house from 11-noon, for Jilli's PT", says the Stroppy One.
"Nope. Went to bed at 3."
I proceeded to have a mild panic attack, because of all the aforementioned buttons from the show, and okay I was sitting at my computer at 3, I would have SEEN the Madwoman come downstairs to brush her teeth, but I didn't, so maybe I'm losing time and this is the sign of my long-standing fear about losing grip on any sort of reality has finally fucking happened. So, uh, panic attack.
"I brushed my teeth a little before noon", says the Madwoman. "Yeah, you guys may not have been home".
So I'm not crazy (in that way), but I guess my long-standing fear about that flavor of crazy isn't as mild as I thought. My brain is a wonderland.
I was delighted by the horror/ghost elements, even if they got me with a bunch of the jump scares. Each one of those jump scares were appropriate to the context of the story and not just cheap triggers for screams from the audience, which I always approve of. But the show was still a hard thing to watch for me, for reasons relating to my own flavor of crazycakes.
- A dysfunctional family where people don't talk about things because they want to protect everyone else from worrying.
- The mother suffers from hellacious migraines, increasing nightmares, increasing stress, and an increasing sense of reality getting "soft" around the edges.
- Unreliable narrators ahoy!
- Supernatural elements that may or may not be real, see the previous two points.
Those things are tailor-made to hit my buttons. Yes, right down to the sense of reality being "soft". Let me put it this way: I read "Pickman's Model" by Lovecraft at waaaaaay too young an age.
So last night as we were watching, the Madwoman wandered downstairs to make her coffee. We paused the show, and commented that she must have gone to bed early, because we hadn't seen her all day.
"No", she said.
"But we were only out of the house from 11-noon, for Jilli's PT", says the Stroppy One.
"Nope. Went to bed at 3."
I proceeded to have a mild panic attack, because of all the aforementioned buttons from the show, and okay I was sitting at my computer at 3, I would have SEEN the Madwoman come downstairs to brush her teeth, but I didn't, so maybe I'm losing time and this is the sign of my long-standing fear about losing grip on any sort of reality has finally fucking happened. So, uh, panic attack.
"I brushed my teeth a little before noon", says the Madwoman. "Yeah, you guys may not have been home".
So I'm not crazy (in that way), but I guess my long-standing fear about that flavor of crazy isn't as mild as I thought. My brain is a wonderland.
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