YMMV / The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The House. Is it a genuine predatory entity that wishes to feed or just a deposit for spirits (both good or bad) who die within its grounds? While the characters in the show imply belief in the former position, the latter is still arguable due to most of the spirits of Hill House not being violent, if not just scaring the characters; the most evil character seems to be Poppy, and it's worth noting that fellow ghost Hazel even gives a seemingly well-intentioned warning to Olivia about her being a liar. Given that Poppy and later Olivia are the primary spreaders of the harm, Olivia has some level of psychic ability, and the Red Room doesn't do much to the children during their younger years beyond shape shifting, it's left ambiguous how much of the room's more insidious visions and illusions are due to the house's nature or due to the minds and intentions of the people and ghosts inhabiting it. Like Olivia and Poppy, once Nell becomes a ghost she eventually gains some control over the visions the living cast experience within the house—enabling her to not only appear as she wishes within its halls (instead of as a corpse with a broken neck), but to remove her siblings from other illusions. The same is true of Hugh, who seemingly wills an illusion of what really happened the night Olivia died into existence for the sake of showing Steven. The ghosts' abilities to create and alter illusions within the house means it's entirely possible within the scenario presented that it's the ghostly inhabitants who are the source of the malicious intent, not the house.
  • Did Joey abandon Luke simply because she cared more about getting high despite his attempts to help her? Or did she notice that Luke was exhibiting a bunch of symptoms of withdrawal and think that perhaps he had used too and felt betrayed? Notably, the last thing she does before suddenly thanking him and kissing him (allowing her to steal the money from his back pocket) is notice that Luke was sweating a lot, right after he was complaining about how cold he was despite wearing a heavy coat.
  • The "ghost" stalking Adult Luke: really William Hill, the Bowler Hat Man, or actually just a less psychologically damaging substitute for Olivia, who tried to poison six-year-old Luke and Nell, and killed his friend Abigail in front of them?
  • Did William Hill he really kill himself by bricking himself up in the basement? The police chief suggests he had second thoughts, as the claw marks on the rubble suggest he tried to get back out. But that alcove is overgrown with black mold, which we later find out also covers the Red Room, Poppy's base of operations and which Poppy is able to weaponize against Hugh. Both William and Poppy were clinically insane...do the claw marks suggest, perhaps, that Poppy bricked him up and he tried to fight his way out?
  • Is Olivia staring at Steve at the end of episode 10 because she still wants the rest of the children to join the house? Or is it simply a nonverbal goodbye and acknowledgement that her son now knows the truth about her?
  • Most if not all of the ghosts, except Poppy, seem to be just neutrally watching the events proceeding through the House - the one entertainment left to them - rather than intentionally scaring or attacking the family. Note that William Hill, for example, is shown in photos benignly indulging his niece in a tea party - and doesn't appear to have done any physical harm to Luke.
• Awesome Music:
  • The soundtrack composed by the Newton Brothers is breathtaking, giving a sense of sadness and horror, combining the show's traits of being a horror story but also a heartbreaking tale of trauma. Examples include...:
  • "The Haunting of Hill House - Theme" adding to the show's atmosphere.
  • "12:00 AM", which plays around the growing horror of Nell's suicide at the exact same time in the first episode.
  • "Feel Nothing", which adds to the heartbreak of Theo's terrified rant about feeling The Nothing After Death after touching Nell's body and making Shirley realize that she never tried to start an affair with her husband.
  • I Want To Wake up So Badly is both terrifying and heartbreaking, perfectly encapsulating the tragedy of Olivia's spiral into madness and eventual death.
  • "Go Tomorrow" and by an extent "The End", which play during Nell's ghost comforting her siblings and Steve watching Hugh's ghost reunite with Nell and Olivia in the Red Room.
  • The closing theme, "If I Go, I'm Goin'" by Gregory Alan Isakov, it is a perfect way to close out the series.
• Broken Base: The show's ending tends to bother a huge selection of people, mainly due to how optimistic it is compared to the rest of show's tone. Some think it's a deserving Earn Your Happy Ending for the Crain family while some feel it's just Flanagan trolling the audience into not seeing it's a secret Downer Ending.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Another member of Luke’s drug therapy group tells an utterly horrific story of how he blinded himself to never again be reminded of a little girl’s corpse he saw in the army, but now it’s the only thing he sees. Luke is asked to go next, and can only laugh at being expected to follow that.
  • Episode 8 features a rather brash fight between Theo and Shirley...which leads to Shirley accidentally punching Theo in the chest. Cue Theo then asking "Did you just punch my boob?".
• Delusion Conclusion: Despite the overwhelming evidence for the supernatural by the end of the series, some viewers still claim that the ghosts and other supernatural activity within the house are just hallucinations after all. However, rather than insisting on a diagnosis of mental illness as Steve does, many propose that the visions were actually brought about by exposure to the black mold infesting the house.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: As a child, Luke Crain speaks with an odd affect and has a mantra of counting to 7 to feel safe—a habit he carries into adulthood. As an adult, his speech is more normalized, but he is rather withdrawn and stutters a lot, though it's hard to know how much of that is related to his drug use. Or, come to that, how much his drug abuse was due to the traumatic circumstances of his mother's death and how much was simply self-medication for his pre-existing mental issues.
• Epileptic Trees: Debates have ranged about the show's ending, on whether or not the Crains escaped the Red Room or if they're in a mirage like the Red Room had done before, following Mike Flanagan revealing the original ending to the series. This was also not helped with Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Adult Luke) pointing out in an interview that there is always some element which is red when characters are in the Red Room - and in the last scene Luke's sobriety cake is red.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Hill House in a sense wins and continues to exist after it has collected so many souls to keep in its grounds and now has taken Hugh Crain alongside Nell and Olivia. And yet we're suppose to be okay that Steve cannot breathe a word of this? While the Crains have reunited and are a family again by the end of it, the House still lingers within the forests, waiting for more victims to take. Poor Nell also presumably has to spend eternity without her husband or her beloved siblings.
• Fanfic Fuel: The facts of the back story behind this new version of Hill House and its past, alongside the Red Room, gives a lot of writers plenty to go mad with.
• Fridge Horror: Poppy's descriptions of her dreams of her children (Jacqueline and Eugene) dying is this, once you read the supplementary material and realize it's a pretty accurate description of how Hazel allegedly murdered them.
  On Jacqueline's death: I dreamed I lost my little girl once. I dreamed that she was choking on her own body for no reason. Just trying for air like the room was underwater, and shaking like she was in the hot squat^note slang for the electric chair. And I dreamed I held her little hand and sat at her side. And days, it took days, weeks, it took weeks for her to quit gulping in that watery air, quit gaping at me like a fish on the beach, but finally, she did. She breathed, ragged and hard, and she went stiff and one of her eyes turned red as blood. And she would shake. She’d shake so bad the bed would shake. And when she started shaking, it went fast. She dangled. She died. Hazel shoved her headfirst into wet cement and she drowned/suffocated. The builders were traumatized after chiseling her body out, describing it as "a crude statue".
  On Eugene's death: And my boy... I once dreamed his little legs stopped working. They just... stopped one day. And... he couldn’t walk, and he couldn’t stand, and he couldn’t speak, and then he couldn’t do anything but cry. Cry and bang on the walls. Bang on the walls for help and bang on the walls for Momma and just bang, bang, bang. And he couldn’t even see. In the end, he couldn’t see me there with him. And then he stopped banging, he stopped crying... he stopped it all once he died. I held him so long, he went cold in my arms. Hazel slowly poisoned him to death over a period of time.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Theo. Having the ability to sense people's emotions must suck and her rant about how she felt complete emptiness upon touching Nell's dead body makes you realize how broken she is..
  • Hugh Crain. He starts off as a kindhearted man with a loving wife, but the House destroys it all and despite keeping to his story that the House killed his wife, he's made a laughingstock and his family grows to hate him for it, especially Steve.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Shirley is often hypocritical and self-righteous, but it's hard not to feel sorry for her considering how much Hill House left her mentally ruined and the amount of hell she's struggled with since then.
  • Steven is rude, snippy, arrogant, and a borderline asshole, but he also is in such denial that the House wasn't haunted and seeing ghosts (to the point of refusing to have children because he thinks they would inherit the supposed mental disease that he believes is behind it all) that it's hard not to feel some pity for him.
• Narm:
  • The first episode has a horribly contrived Jump Scare as the sound of Hugh getting into bed is amplified to a clearly unnatural level. Luckily, the show never cheats like this again.
• Narm Charm: The Jump Scare with Nell in Episode 8. It comes off as way too over the top when you think of the context that Nell was essentially telling her sisters to stop fighting, but it's so well executed in terms of how the scenes draws you into Theo and Shirley's argument that it can be forgiven. It does help that it afterwards leads to Theo's heartbreaking speech about feeling The Nothing After Death when touching Nell's body.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Considering the Red Room's Lotus-Eater Machine powers, you'll be looking for your room just having one window too.
  • Olivia's Death Glare in the end of Episode 10 give some vibes that the family isn't safe yet...
• Signature Scene:
  • In the final episode, Nell's speech about love and time is the most well-known scene of the show.
  • Nell abruptly screaming in the middle of Theo and Shirley's argument is often declared by fans as one of the greatest Jump Scares ever made, due to being both absolutely terrifying in the moment but also having a purpose beyond that momentary shock which is entirely rooted in the characters.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Luke is considered the family Black Sheep for his addiction and how many times he's fucked over his loved ones while in its grasp. Off-screen, he is one of the most sympathetic people because he's trying to change his life.
• The Woobie:
  • Olivia Crain. The House drives her mad to the point where she doesn't want her children to leave, ever, and it pushes her into almost killing her twin children, succeeding in only killing Abigail Dudley.
  • Nell Crain is probably the biggest Woobie due to being the most traumatized by the House, her husband is killed by herself as the Bent-Neck Lady, and she herself becomes a ghoul of the House after she's tricked into killing herself.
  • Luke Crain nearly tops his twin sister for how fucked his life is after Hill House, what with his drug problems and the trauma of his experiences of said house manifesting as William Hill and by an extent, his own mother.

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