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Showing posts from October, 2018

The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

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Mike Flanagan's Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Hill House  is not an adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel The Haunting of Hill House . The miniseries is a work of its own, separate, unique — but haunted by The Haunting of Hill House.  And not only The Haunting of Hill House : the miniseries is also haunted by the first adaptation of Jackson's novel, the classic 1963 film  The Haunting , and by numerous other stories and movies ( The Legend of Hell House , The Shining , etc.). During the first few episodes, I thought the connection to Jackson's novel was unnecessary, perhaps even burdensome. I assumed somebody had bought the rights and then, through the tortuous (and torturous) process of Hollywood development, the novel got more and more distant from the project while remaining contractually bound to it. Perhaps, I thought, Flanagan was able to do with this property what he'd done with Ouija: Origin of Evil  and convince the producers to let him make the mo