The Haunting of Hill House: Steven Sees a Ghost

"Nellie's in the red room!"

It’s hard to judge first episodes, with all the exposition they have to do on top of hooking you. This one manages rather well, I think.

I’m not so done who watches horror to be scared: to me it’s a splendidly artificial genre where the point is precisely that I’m very much aware of how the camera, music and script create a mood. Of course, horror works best- as here- where there’s also good drama and solid character work, but I suppose I love the genre precisely because I find it intrinsically cheesy. That said, the last minute twist- where Steven finally sees his first ever ghost at the end- made me jump. And is an enormously clever narrative gambit. Especially as we have an extended early scene establishing his relative scepticism, and that he closed his eyes during a certain childhood episode.

The episode is very Stephen King, existing in two time zones- the children’s childhoods and the adult present. There’s a very gothic and nebulous ghostly evil from the past, in this case a creepy old house (a hundred years is old over there; I’ve owned somewhere older, though much less grand) and, just to double down on the Stephen King-ness, the central character is a horror writer called Steven.

The siblings are well drawn though, from serious Shirley and commitment-phobic Theo(dora) to the damaged Nell (she who sees the “bent necked lady” and Luke, of the creepy childhood drawings. There’s a lot here to make me want to see more. A good start.