“The Fall of the House of Usher,” Mike Flanagan’s latest project, was released on Oct. 12 on Netflix. The limited series is a loose adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story of the same name, drawing inspiration from several of his other works. The story focuses on Roderick Usher, the head of a multimillion-dollar pharmaceutical company and his six children. “The Fall of the House of Usher” was released exactly five years after Flanagan’s critically acclaimed series “The Haunting of Hill House.”
The first episode begins with lawyer C. Auguste Dupin visiting the childhood home of his longtime acquaintance, Roderick Usher, after receiving a call that he is ready to confess. Upon arrival, Dupin expresses his condolences for the recent loss of all six of Roderick’s children, seemingly in a series of freak accidents; Roderick replies that he is responsible for the events. As he launches into his confession, the downfalls and eventual deaths of all his children are seen in flashbacks.
“Usher” continues Flanagan’s tradition of releasing a horror series on Netflix around Halloween time. Along with “The Haunting of Hill House,” Flanagan’s previous works released on Netflix have included “The Haunting of Bly Manor” (2020), “Midnight Mass” (2021), and “The Midnight Club” (2022). Flanagan is known for working with the same ensemble of actors across different projects, so longtime fans will recognize several familiar faces, notably Carla Gugino as Verna and Henry Thomas as Frederick Usher.
Episodes two through seven each focus on a different Usher child, following their lives in the days leading up to their deaths. Each episode ends with an elaborate, macabre death sequence. Interspersed are flashbacks from throughout Roderick’s life, showing how he and his twin sister Madeline gained control over Fortunato, the pharmaceutical company they ran as a family. Although the deaths appear to be of mostly natural albeit bizarre circumstances to the public, it is revealed that Verna, a mysterious entity with supernatural powers, orchestrated each demise as retribution for the drug-related deaths that Roderick’s company has caused. The episodes that focus on the children take their titles from and loosely adapt multiple of Poe’s works, such as “Murder in the Rue Morgue” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
The most horrifying scenes appear in the penultimate episode, titled “The Pit and the Pendulum,” which focuses on Frederick, the oldest of the Usher children. In a chilling performance by Henry Thomas, Frederick is seen throughout the season grappling with suspicions of infidelity from his wife Morella after she is found with severe acid burns as the sole survivor of his late brother Prospero’s ill-fated orgy with her wedding ring missing.
In this episode, Frederick takes his wife out of the hospital to continue her recovery at home, against the advice of her doctors. Instead of caring for her, however, Frederick continues to break down rapidly, verbally berating her and covering the room in hundreds of photos of the two of them on their wedding day. His abusive behavior reaches its peak when he injects Morella with a paralytic before pulling out all of her teeth with a pair of pliers. Of course, the episode ends with Verna killing him.
There are some issues with “Usher,” namely uneven pacing and a lack of scares compared to Flanagan’s past projects. Additionally, some of the Usher children’s story arcs are less developed than others, resulting in their deaths not packing as much of a punch. Kate Siegel, who plays Camille Usher, is particularly underused as her storyline in the third episode is one of the most anticlimactic.
Overall, however, “Usher” is a strong comeback after last years cancellation of “The Midnight Club,” Flanagan’s only Netflix series that was intended to have more than one season. It will also most likely be his last project with Netflix, as Flanagan and his partner, Trevor Macy, signed a deal with Amazon late last year. However, he is expected to release two horror movies and another series in the future, so there may be hope yet for fans who look forward to a Flanagan project every Halloween.
Sophie Machernis can be reached at [email protected]
