The Haunting of Hill House
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Part of me just wants to bellow Im DISAPPOINTED!
like Kevin Kline inA Fish Called Wanda.
Butits more complicated than that, so here goes.
I still refuse to care about Steve.
Only poor Hugh must remain on the outside, unwelcome at this particular family meeting.
His own wish fulfillment will look different.
(I still wish there had been more backstory about him and Olivia a missed opportunity.)
Fear and guilt are sisters, Trish tells Theo.
In the show, grief is more powerful than guilt.
(And why exactly does Steve deserve to be the authority on ghosts?)
Its a consoling message.
Its a brilliant plot twist, but it stops short of where it could go.
In the novel, the hope the house offers Eleanor the hope of coming home is false.
As we remember from its first paragraph, Whatever walked there, walked alone.
When I heard the way the shows ending alters that line, the words Are you fucking kidding me?
The show stares all the bleakness of death right in the face and then pulls back.
Go big or go home, I say.
(Her eldest son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, served as a consultant.)
I wont go there.
But I wish it hadnt betrayed its own vision in the end.
I just didnt know it would be Shirley or Mrs. Harris, as shes called here.
The Grattan Murders is a ballad that Shirley Jackson used to sing as a lullaby to her children.
When I interviewed her, one of Jacksons daughters sang it to me.
Interesting twist at the end with Abigail.
But were we told at some point that the Dudleys had two children?
Who looks after her all day while Mrs. Dudley is working at Hill House?
Annabeth Gish is great in the role, but this subplot is still full of inconsistencies.
This is the buildingI believe Jackson used as a model for Hill House.
Theevidence is in my book.
