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Two years ago Netflix and director Mike Flanagan sent chills down viewers’ spines with a new, very loose adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. The limited series won rave reviews from critics but also was met with great consternation by loyalists of the original novel and the classic 1962 film, neither of which the series bore much resemblance to other than the character names, and even there the relationships were completely changed. Using the film as a benchmark for which to measure all other haunted house movies, I did not have a problem with the series once things got rolling and I accepted it on its own terms.
The success of Hill House got the wheels rolling to continue the series, but how to continue what was a self-contained story with a beginning, middle and end? Look for other literary works that lend themselves to the format of a haunted residence. Netflix and Flanagan came up with the next logical choice in The Haunting of Bly Manor which, as stated in the credits, is based on the works of Henry James, specifically The Turn of the Screw which has already been turned into a play and the 1961 classic film The Innocents, and a 2020 adaptation called The Turning. Though published in 1898, the new version sets the story in a ‘modern’ era, although still a few decades removed from the present of 2020 with the bulk of the story set in 1987 with a 2007 bookend (and, of course, a late in the series ‘origin episode’ that finally reveals why the manor is haunted).
The main story is actually being told to a group of assembled guests on the eve of a wedding by an unidentified narrator (Carla Gugino), who only seems to have a vague connection to the wedding party. She tells the story of a young American woman, Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti), who has traveled to England for reasons unknown — at first — and applies for a position as an au pair even though she has no experience aside from being a teacher. But after noticing the position had been open for six months, she had to find out why. Her meeting with Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas) does not go well, but when he shows up at the pub where she’s drowning her sorrows, the two strike up a conversation and the next thing Dani knows, she’s being driven to Bly Manor, her new home.
There she meets her charges, Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Flora (Amelie Bea Smith), charming, precocious but curious children; Flora has an odd collection of handmade dolls (which she treats as talismans) and Miles’ personality can flip like a lightswitch. Dani and the other members of the household staff — cook Owen (Rahul Kohli), groundskeeper Jamie (Amelia Eve) and housekeeper Mrs. Grose (T’Nia Miller) — chalk up the behavioral issues to the fact the children lost their parents in an accident while overseas and their Uncle Henry never comes to visit. In fact, his strict orders to Dani are that he is not to be contacted unless the children are injured. Dani takes to the children, even after Miles locks her in a closet, and Flora warns her to never leave her bedroom at night. Dani begins to experience odd occurrences like muddy footprints on the floor every night, and the appearance of a man on the parapet where the children’s parents’ bedroom is, although that wing of the manor is not to be visited. Dani then begins to learn the man, Peter Quint (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), was in a relationship with the previous au pair, Miss Jessel (Tahirah Sharif), who took her own life after Quint vanished after allegedly stealing a quarter of a million pounds from his boss, Henry Wingrave. Everyone is surprised Peter would show is face again, but they assume he does not know Miss Jessel is dead. Dani is becoming more terrified by Peter’s appearances, and the crank phone calls they believe are coming from him, hoping his girlfriend would answer they assume, but it’s the behavior of the children that becomes more concerning as Miles begins to act out more and Flora always seems to be acknowledging someone unseen by others. We do learn why Dani is in England, haunted by her own ghost that didn’t stay in the States, and we also see her start to realize she has an attraction to Jamie. A third love story also develops between Owen and Mrs. Grose. They all find out there are many complications when love grows in a haunted house.
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The Haunting of Bly Manor is a bit of a different animal from The Haunting of Hill House. Hill House was quite terrifying to watch mainly because of Flanagan’s skillful direction (helming all ten episodes) and his often subliminal use of ghosts in many scenes, often just lurking in the backgrounds or the shadows so that the viewer would just catch a glimpse from the corner of their eye while the characters on screen went about their business. There’s not a lot of that in Bly Manor, although the first episode, directed again by Flanagan, did have my heart beating for most of its running time, never knowing what was going to come out of the shadows or be seen in a mirror. From that point on, the series is more invested in telling the stories of all of its characters — why Miles was expelled from boarding school, why Henry doesn’t visit the children, why Mrs. Grose never seems to eat dinner with everyone, and the origin story of Bly Manor itself, beautifully told in black and white, revealing why the manor became such a gravity well for the spirits and revealing who many of them we did catch glimpses of were before they were ghosts … and how they got that way. What happened in the past is actually the first love story of Bly Manor, one that was beset with and ended in tragedy. And then the terror ramps up again for the last couple of episodes.
Viewers expecting to be on the edge of their seats may be a bit disappointed but this is really a character study and what the series does well is presents us with a very likable group of characters — the house staff — that you root for in their efforts to save the children and make sense of their complicated lives at Bly Manor. Kohli, Miller, Pedretti and Eve are all outstanding in connecting with each other, and even more importantly with the audience. You can’t not want Mrs. Grose and Owen to finally acknowledge their attraction to each other, and while it seems to come out of the blue, you do root for Dani and Jamie as well especially as Jamie, who starts off quite the aloof character, warms to Dani and wants to be her protector. Sharif is also wonderful as Miss Jessel, especially when she realizes she’s been betrayed by Peter, and Cohen-Jackson makes a right villain, easily turning on the charm and turning it right back off when he’s crossed, a behavior Miles seems to be emulating (and young Ainsworth makes those switches in his personality seamless). Everyone does an excellent job from the children to the adults.
While the series is well-directed, particularly the first and the eighth (the flashback origin story), it does suffer just a bit by not having Flanagan’s hands on each of the nine episodes. He did some brilliant work with Hill House and he has a singular vision when it comes to horror and that it missing, aside from the visually creative eighth episode directed by Axelle Carolyn, which was easily my favorite of the season. Perhaps too many cooks in the kitchen diluted some of the expected tension. If I had any issue with the show, it’s that some of the British accents are hard to get so I spent a lot of time with the captions turned on. What really is important here is watching the series in the fastest time possible so you don’t forget how the show begins. While the final scene is very moving, it makes the opening scene of the first episode make much more sense so if you can spend a day binging, that’s the best way to go. The story does seem to follow The Turn of the Screw even as it takes some liberties and changes the ending, but I think the new ending has a huge emotional impact that still makes my eyes tear up a day after finishing it.
Overall, The Haunting of Bly Manor may not be the scariest thing you’ll see this Halloween, but you may still want to watch it with the lights turned on (and not right before bed!). I enjoyed it and I hope Flanagan can find his next Haunting of story to really gives us a fright.
What did you think of this series? Sound off in the comments below!
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