The Haunting of Hill House

“The Haunting of Hill House” is a horror, supernatural, drama TV show currently available on Netflix, Youtube, and Google Play Movies & TV. It has one season with ten episodes, each one about an hour in length. The show was first released in 2018, and it is based on a book with the same title, written in 1959 by American writer Shirley Jackson.

With the use of a scrambled chronological narrative structure, the story follows the Crain family — a mother, father, two sons, and three daughters — during two different points in time. One is the present, and the other is thirty years in the past, when the children were all young. In the latter, the audience watches as the family moves into a run-down mansion, called “Hill House”, hoping to fix it up and sell it for a profit before summer’s end. The mansion, however, has some supernatural characteristics to it that make this process a metaphorical nightmare for the parents, and a literal one for the children. Over the course of the summer, these characteristics reveal themselves and, as a result, the Crain family is ultimately forced out of the mansion, although not without questions, repercussions, and trauma. In the present, the audience watches as the distressing events the family experienced thirty years ago in Hill House come back to haunt them. Literally. And when one of the Crains gives into their fear and does something terrible, everyone else is brought back together.

As someone who loves the horror genre, I highly enjoyed “The Haunting of Hill House”. However, contrary to what its title may imply, the show is not entirely about extending the amount of time it takes its viewers to fall asleep at night. Every so often, the plot will take a turn in the dramatic direction of television, and it always does so very effectively. The impressive story, writing, and acting all come together to create an exceptionally admirable TV show. If you’re looking for a show that can give you goosebumps, make you scream, make you cry, and even be so blown away to the point where you can do nothing but sit wide-eyed and mouth agape, then this is what you should be watching this Halloween.