What follows is a beautiful sequence of Nell traversing the dilapidated rooms of Hill House, where she is greeted by apparitions of her welcoming family and dead husband. Spiraling into depression and anxiety, Nell’s erratic behavior pushes her family away, and finally, off her meds and on the advice of her therapist, she makes her way back to the abandoned Hill House to confront the root of her misery. One evening, The Bent-Neck Lady returns with a vengeance, accompanied by a mysterious “aneurysm” that kills Arthur instantly. However, as a young woman, Nell is able to find love and a brief respite from her personal demon in the form of Arthur Vance (whom she eventually marries), a charming sleep technician that helps her manage her sleep paralysis with breathing techniques and therapy that keeps the ghost away.at least for a few years. Always accompanied by a seizing sleep paralysis, The Bent-Neck Lady plagues Nell her entire life, even long after the Crains’ hurried escape from the dreaded mansion. You see, ever since her stay at Hill House, Nell has been haunted by a ghost she dubs “The Bent-Neck Lady.” With dark stringy hair, a shadowed face, and a grotesque crook in her neck, this ghastly apparition first appears to little Nell at the foot of her bed at Hill House. Completely upending horror tropes and clichés, “The Bent-Neck Lady” is a master class in sharp twists, sheer terror, and heartbreaking tragedy. Although she makes a swift exit from the mortal coil early on, Nell and her death remain the emotional crux of The Haunting of Hill House, and when it’s her turn to take the spotlight in “The Bent-Neck Lady,” we get to witness some of the best horror and television that 2018 has to offer. The catalyst for the siblings’ reunion takes place at the end of the first episode, when the youngest, Eleanor “Nell” Crain (a fantastic Victoria Pedretti), returns to the abandoned Hill House and apparently commits suicide. Over the course of ten episodes, Hill House follows the adult Crain children with character-centric stories as they deal with the death of one of their own, while also filling in the blanks of the fateful evening that has haunted them their entire lives. Their residency at Hill House culminates with a gruesome night that leaves Olivia dead and Hugh fleeing with the children in tow. Hugh (Henry Thomas) and Olivia Crain (Flanagan mainstay Carla Gugino) and their five children spend the summer sprucing up the old estate, all the while being tormented by dark specters and inexplicable happenings. The Haunting of Hill House centers around the Crain family, who move into the eponymous house in the early 90s with the intent to renovate and flip the property. A sprawling family drama firmly planted in the confines of gothic ghost horror, Hill House dishes out both poignant storytelling and chilling frights in equal measure, and none more prevalent than the show’s haunting fifth episode, “The Bent-Neck Lady.” An almost stand-alone tale, it’s an episode that is moving and tragic, wrapped up in a ghostly origin story that will leave your jaw on the floor. This brings us to the superb new Netflix original series, The Haunting of Hill House. There are obviously exceptions, but even when films like The Sixth Sense or A Ghost Story come around to surprise and delight us with something new or profound, they’re usually on the periphery of the horror genre true. It’s difficult to come by a truly affecting ghost story - dusty old nuns, drowned children, and murdered caretakers from decades past, they always seem to be in service of the scare and not much else. Perhaps it’s because they’re a relic of the Victorian - a time obsessed with spirituality, seances, and spirit photography - but ghost stories have always lacked a certain modern resonance. Twisted phantasms that linger, lurch, and lunge, ghosts have been terrorizing audiences since the beginning of entertainment and cinema. One of the biggest contributors to the quality of Netflix’s newest ghostly series is the show’s fifth episode, “The Bent-Neck Lady.” The episode is not only the best of the series, but one of the best episodes of television in 2018, with tinges of Lost’s “The Constant” and this year’s equally masterful “The Queen” from Hulu’s Castle Rock. Loosely based upon the 1959 classic gothic horror novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson, Hill House is deftly adapted by horror veteran Mike Flanagan with equal parts terror, suspense, and melancholy. The Haunting of Hill House is one of Netflix’s best original series.
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