The first shot of the opening episode looks upon the Hill House mansion. It’s brooding, drenched in fog, and there’s a certain macabre that screams classic haunted house lore. An adaptation of the 1959 book by Shirley Jackson, director Mike Flanagan starts off electing to tell this story from various points in time. Every frame serves its own purpose.
Now, there are ghoulish things afoot and one ghost that pops up, but the emphasis in the first episode is on fracturing of family and how shared experiences can differ from person to person. If anything, the hauntings are shown just enough to get a jolt out of you. Some people are broken by circumstances, some people choose to forget them – within that instance, become numb to the people around them.
Perhaps, even growing distant from one another. How does a family even have some semblance of togetherness after a traumatic experience? Maybe the “horror” is as bad after the fact as it is during the consequences. Within the storytelling that switches from past to present often, “Steven Sees a Ghost” gives us a look at where the Crain family fabric started to fracture. There are little morsels that are given throughout the 60-minute episode that doesn’t take away from the mystery but drives you deeper into it.
Steven Crain (Michiel Huisman) is the eldest child of the Crain family and author. When we first meet him, he is talking to Irene Walker and discussing a haunting that she claimed to have experienced from her dead husband, Carl. In search to write a new book, Steven is looking for every way to debunk this experience. In a way, this can be interpreted as rejecting everything from his childhood. He mentions to Irene that haunting occur without “a reason”, so don’t expect to find one.
As we progress through the episode, we see his almost non-committal relationship to family members and that progresses into a hatred for his father, Hugh Crain (Timothy Hutton/Henry Thomas). More on that in a bit. Steven has written about his family experiences at Hill House which drew some ire from his sister, Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser).
Shirley has a family of her own, works in a mortuary with her husband and continues her adverse relationship through a phone call with Steven over a frantic voicemail left by their younger sister, Nell. In writing the book, it seems like Steven wanted to at least profit from the pain as penance from his father. Shirley reminds him that the Hill House experience almost destroyed the family. It’s two different ideologies at war from the two oldest siblings.
“Theo” Crain (Kate Siegel) seems to be the coldest out of all the children – having a one-night stand and quickly discarding the lady. Also, in speaking to Elizabeth, she speaks of boundaries in respect to their younger siblings. She’s almost taking the “Steven” approach even though she lives with Shirley.
Some of the Crain family isn’t doing so well. Luke Crain (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is a drug addict and even goes as far as robbing his own brother, Steven later in the episode. There are hints that an experience is happening to Luke, particularly with his drawings at a younger age. Also remember, Luke and Nell stayed in the same room as kids – probably resulting in Luke having a prolonged shock to what Nell was experiencing.
“Nell” Crain (Victoria Pedretti) has never recovered mentally from staying at Hill House. In flashbacks, you see that she is the child that interacts with the ghost, up close and personal. It even goes far as her adult life still having a connection with the mansion that ends in a tragic manner. Hugh is still haunted by his deceased wife, Olivia (Carla Gugino) and in another flashback scene, we see Olivia come unhinged chasing the family out the mansion. While we don’t see the circumstances in which Olivia passes away, we see the aftermath. Hugh and a young Steven speak to a lawyer about the tabloid stories that Hugh as given. With him being so terrified of the house, Hugh refuses to sell it, and that’s where you see the relationship between him and Steven sour. That division only grows over time.
There are many mysteries to be solved. What drove Olivia to commit suicide? That is behind the red door? Did the same thing that claimed Olivia’s life also take Nell? Flanagan uses time to both advance and give little tidbits of what happened to this family like a murder mystery. It just happens to be within a gothic, supernatural setting. Everybody has their own way to cope with what happened at Hill House. Whether or not it will bring the family closer together at the end is the real question. Some want to move forward, and some are stuck in the mud.
Rating: 8/10
Haunting of Hill House is currently streaming on Netflix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9OzG53VwIk
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