SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for all eight episodes of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” now streaming on Netflix, and several works of Edgar Allan Poe that have been available to read for more than 150 years.
Mike Flanagan never met a haunted house he didn’t want to peel back the wallpaper on and see what horrors lurk beneath.
At Netflix, the writer/director has become a Halloween staple by exploring the hallowed halls of novelists Shirley Jackson “(The Haunting of Hill House)” and Henry James “(The Haunting of Bly Manor).” On the big screen, he even helmed a Stephen King-endorsed return trip to Overlook Hotel for “The Shining” sequel “Doctor Sleep.”
But for his final act at Netflix before his production company Intrepid Pictures begins an overall deal at Amazon, Flanagan gets lost in a different type of literary labyrinth –– the mind of Edgar Allan Poe. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Flanagan uses Poe’s 1839 short story to dismantle the dynasty of morally bankrupt Fortunato Pharmaceuticals CEO Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), who built a legacy on his consumer’s dependence on his highly addictive opioid named Ligodone. But Flanagan doesn’t stop there: The series mines Poe’s archives for inspiration on how to gruesomely dispatch Roderick’s six children –– Frederick (Henry Thomas), Tamerlane (Samanatha Sloyvan), Victorine (T’Nia Miller), Leo (Rahul Kohli), Camille (Kate Siegel) and Perry (Sauriyan Sapkota). The line of succession is severed by fate in the form of a mysterious shapeshifting harbinger named Verna (Carla Gugino), with whom a young Roderick and his sister Madeline (Mary McDonnell) made a deal for boundless success in exchange for the lives of his eventual offspring.
Each episode is named for the Poe story that serves as its narrative spine, but none are to-the-letter adaptations. Instead, Flanagan filters this modern take on the toxicity of power and the persistence of karma through Poe’s creations, offering a sort of Sackler-esque family slaughterfest dressed up as a greatest hits homage to the master of the macabre.
Whether you know Poe or not, here’s how “The Fall of the House of Usher” faithfully adapts –– and sinisterly subverts –– his classics.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Poe’s Premise: An unnamed man is summoned to the crumbling estate of his friend Roderick Usher, who informs the man that his twin sister Madeline has died. After entombing Madeline, the two men start to feel unsettled by the malevolent sounds of the old house and learn Madeline is not as dead as Roderick led his friend to believe.
Flanagan’s Spin: The framework of Flanagan’s series puts the audience in the hands of Poe’s favorite perspective –– an unreliable narrator driven mad. But in Flanagan’s story, the man visiting Usher at his deteriorating childhood home is notably not his friend. He is C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), the assistant U.S. attorney hellbent on convicting Roderick and the Usher family for their crimes. Dupin is an original character Poe created who, despite not ever being identified as a detective, would serve as the inspiration for iconic ones like Sherlock Holmes. But Dupin isn’t part of the “The Fall of the House of Usher” story, nor are the Usher children seen in the series. Instead, Flanagan pulls at three threads key to “The Fall of the House of Usher” story — the set-up, the twist and the climax. First, Flanagan lets Dupin stand in for Poe’s narrator, who is given a front-row seat to Roderick’s reckoning. Although Dupin isn’t there for comfort but rather to get a long-awaited confession from his elusive target. Secondly, Flanagan lets the dreadful possibility of Madeline’s likely death hang over viewers longer than Poe, as Roderick constantly reassures Dupin she’s just tinkering in the basement. In both versions, Roderick’s withering mind truly believes Madeline is dead only for her to emerge in the final moments to literally scare the life out of her brother. Flanagan, however, doesn’t just entomb her. His Roderick gives her an Egyptian queen’s burial after he kills her –– complete with a hot poker up the nose and jade stones replacing her eyes. It makes her jump-scare resurrection an even more gruesome sight. Finally, as Dupin and his literary counterpart escape their versions of the Usher home in fear for their lives, the weight of the tainted Usher legacy literally brings down the house on top of the siblings.
The Masque of the Red Death
Poe’s Premise: As a plague known as the Red Death sweeps across the land, Prince Prospero and a horde of high-society people wall themselves off in a castle-like abbey. To pass the time, Propsero hosts a lavish masquerade ball with attendees welcomed to navigate seven color-themed rooms –– the final one coated in blood red. But Prospero is intrigued by the emergence of a mysterious shrouded figure, to whom he catches up in the red room and immediately dies. The enraged guests attempt to uncloak the figure only to learn it is the Red Death, and they have all been infected.
Flanagan’s Twist: Indifference is at the heart of both tellings of “The Masque of the Red Death.” For Poe, it’s indifference to the plight of the average person in the face of an invisible killer savagely claiming those who can’t escape to the perceived safety of privilege. But on the show, Prospero aka Perry, the youngest of Usher kids, shows indifference to the deadly Usher legacy he blindly seeks to inherit, at least in name. Flanagan’s Roderick offers all of his coddled children an initial investment to encourage them to get rich, as he did. But Perry’s dream of an exclusive club where the wealthy need not worry about punitive things like morals or credit card limits doesn’t meet his father’s standards. Still, he plans a one-night-only version in one of the Usher’s shuttered testing facilities set for demolition, and spares no expense for his guest list. There’s only one condition: the orgy can’t begin until the sprinklers rain water down on the guests. Ultimately, his callous dismissal of anything but his vision doesn’t account for the fact that Roderick had ordered toxic acid be stored in the facility’s water supply to hide it from federal prosecutors sniffing around the family’s malpractice. So when Perry flips the switch, he showers himself and nearly 100 guests with a flesh-eating party favor. But don’t worry: Flanagan didn’t forget the signature red room from Poe’s story. Before Perry’s meltdown, he follows a cloaked, seductive Verna into a vacant room bathed in red, where he is presented with an opportunity to divert from his path of arrogance –– an option she will offer most of the Usher kids. But just as in Poe’s original, indifference proves to be a sweeter and deadlier option.
Read more here:
https://variety.com/lists/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher-edgar-allen-poe-references/the-tell-tale-heart/
— Variety
