Given that your binging diet may be different than ours, however, we feel duty-bound to warn you that venturing further is not advisable if you haven’t reached the end of the proverbial road. (Because the streaming service premiered the whole shebang a little over a week ago, we’re going to assume that most readers will have seen the entire thing by now and can discuss accordingly.
This is not your father’s Hill House, however - a sentiment that takes on new meaning once you’ve squirmed your way through all 10 hours of this left-field horror-TV hit. And now, because it is the Year of Our Lord 2018 and every recognizable property must inevitably be turned into a multiversed franchise or a multi-episode TV show, we have been given a Netflix series that takes the name of the book and runs with it. Regardless, the DNA of Jackson’s extraordinary ghost story can be found in virtually every modern haunted-house narrative that came after it. It may or may not have helped inspire the name of The House on Haunted Hill, a ballyhoo-filled Vincent Price vehicle that came out the same year as the novel it almost assuredly cast its shadow over Richard Matheson’s 1971 novel Hell House and its 1973 British film adaptation. It’s the source material for Robert Wise’s The Haunting, a 1963 movie that’s Greatest-of-All-Time canon fodder for those who take horror films very seriously (out of a sense of charity and good will towards our fellow man, we’ll never speak of the 1999 big-screen adaptation again). This is establishing your true protagonist. He could have been referring to Hill House as well - less four walls and a roof than a villain that’s “not sane … holding darkness within.” This is not anthropomorphizing a place. The Guardian named it “the definitive haunted house story” The New York Times declared that it had “the greatest opening paragraph in the history of horror” no less than Stephen King, a man who knows a thing or two about the allure of paranormal activity with an appreciation for property value, said it featured “the finest character to come out of new American gothic tradition.” He was talking about Eleanor Vance, one of several “assistants” handpicked by a doctor to study specters roaming the house’s hallways and bedchambers. Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel of a decrepit, rotting mansion populated by things that go bump in the night (and in the psyche) is considered by many to be the ne plus ultra of possessed-dwelling tales. All homes filled with dysfunctional families are alike each house cursed by ghostly manifestations of past and present sins is haunted in its own way.
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