The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix)

The Fall of the House of Usher is a Mike Flanagan horror, in the tradition of Hill House, Bly House and so on. As you might guess from the title it’s inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. If you’re the right sort of nerd you can have fun spotting the references to Poe works, some are huge and smack you in the face, some are smaller or come from his life rather than his writing. I’ve seen reviews that absolutely hate this, or say they make the story incoherent. Personally I found them delightful and well judged. I'm pretty sure I missed some of them but the big, obvious references are held for the right moments - there’s an episode called The Pit and the Pendulum, and the pendulum does its job in a satisfying way. But the smaller moments, the ones that would be spoilers, if I missed them they’re not presented in neon lights and jerking the story out of shape, but if you do catch them, they add an extra little layer of pleasure in the way that all the best easter eggs do.

If you like collecting nerd trivia, or drinking games, you can have fun spotting people from other genre shows. There are returning Flanaverse favourites of course, I spotted Alias, iZombie and Star Wars alums in there.

In addition to all that fun, and a series of suitably gothic, gruesome deaths each of which meet the proper requirements to be a tragedy - we can see them coming but they’re still an inevitable consequence of their flaws - we have a plot device to tie them together. This House of Usher is more like how we use a royal house name, House of Tudor, House of Windsor etc. It’s a family. There is a suitably large and wood-panelled family home too, but that’s not really the house we’re talking about.

Now, on one level this family’s fall works everywhere, doubly so at the moment. The Ushers are ultra-rich, ultra-privileged and ultra-corrupt. The show starts with them finally facing justice, and from Britain it’s hard not to draw parallels to Trump and his children in court for fraud. However, the Ushers are not real-estate moguls, they’re part of big pharma, and they got rich selling a dodgy painkiller. Oxycodone crisis anyone? Oxy was never really a problem in the rest of the world, but we’re kind of aware of it. I think if I were American it would hit harder though simply because it would have been such a big part of my life, instead of an occasional story.

Despite my misgivings, I think the big pharma story still lands about 95%. We don’t have the Oxycodone story, but we have other stories of what big pharma does and what the ultra-rich do, putting them together still works without that extra little bit. We can all see the pressure of money, feeding the kids, against ethics. We see how that develops into self-justification, laziness and manipulation. We don’t see a full set of deadly sins, but we do get an interesting set of character studies that show us behaviours we actually see in the rich and famous but we also see them expressing the flaws that make them fit the theme of the story in each episode. It’s beautifully done and an example of just how good the writing is that doesn’t quite cross the line into spoilers. One quick little bit here - almost all the characters clearly and fully deserved what they got IMO. They crossed the line from spoilt rich brat into actively evil. This being based on Poe, it’s not really spoilers to guess there might be other forces at work, and I wouldn’t want any of the Ushers as my friend, but gruesome death seemed harsh for at least one of them in my eyes.

It’s really hard to talk about Carla Gugino without spoilers, but she just does so much it’s amazing. She has an important overarching role but it presents as lots of different parts and she inhabits them fully. Some of that is clever makeup and wardrobe work, but some is down to Gugino who changes her posture and body language to an amazing degree, pulling of the hard trick of making the parts clearly linked but clearly separate. She presents herself in so many different roles that vary from avenging angel to answer to [character’s] prayer that it can be hard to keep track until you realise that is exactly what she’s doing, very deliberately. In a very different way, Mark Hamill's performance is also a joy to watch. I know he’s got wide range over the years, but this is a fun outing in an unexpected direction. Less of a stretch than Gugino, but still well worth watching.

Just to circle back to the writing, if you’d told me I’d look forward to the scenes of two old guys, mostly sat in armchairs chatting over ludicrously expensive whiskey, chatting about the good old days gripping I might have laughed in your face. I don’t know there’s any episode where I’d say it’s my favourite scene. But I don’t know there are any episodes where these are not in my top three.

Overall there are occasional jump scares, but it’s more gore and psychological horror than jump scares, as you might expect from a series adapted from Poe. That won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but if it’s yours, sit down and get ready to dunk your biccies in a show done with style.

Bechdel Test: Pass. Although I think the dominant relationship is the one between Auguste and Roderick, the two old men, there are plenty of conversations between women at various points in every episode. It’s surprising how rarely they mention men.

Ko Test: Fail. To be clear, there are multiple episodes that pass easily, but after the death of Victorine the remaining WOC are present but essentially are supporting cast or extras. Not enough scenes to pass, even though there are speaking scenes for WOC, and one episode that’s almost all WOC.

Russo Test: Pass. I’m pretty sure Roderick is straight, Fred probably too. Fred’s daughter Lenore is old enough she would probably have a pretty good idea if she was more than a character, but she’s young enough it’s not discussed in the show. Of the rest of the Ushers, several are overtly, clearly queer in different ways. Perry and Camille are in thouples with a man and a woman, so while we don’t know what they label themselves, straight is not an honest label. Leo is shown as in a somewhat committed relationship with another man, but when we first see him he’s being blown by a female fan. Again we don’t know how he labels himself, but not straight. Tamerlane might call herself straight but… she’s got a very specific narcissistic voyeur kink. She might describe herself as straight but it doesn’t feel right. However, short of a show that’s pitched as “the LGBTQIA+ group go on holiday” or “conversion therapy hell” this is about as packed with queer folk as anything I’ve seen. Shame it’s also packed with horrible queer folk who mostly deserve their horrible deaths. Is it hitting Bury Your Gays or No One Gets Out Of Here Alive? I would argue more the latter because no one is killed because they’re gay, they’re not horrible because they’re gay and they’re not super-rich brats because they’re gay. But they die because they’re horrible, super-rich brats.