Polygon.com: Hill House Reportedly Beats Flanagan’s Carrie
Polygon.com says Mike Flanagan’s Hill House nails dread and personal horror while his Carrie series fumbles the prom scene.
TL;DR
- Polygon.com reports Hill House turns the novel into a siblings story with hidden ghosts and slow dread.
- The series splits Eleanor into two characters, making the Bent-Neck Lady twist personal and intimate.
- Polygon.com says the Carrie prom scene shifts blame to Emaline, losing the clear breaking moment.
Polygon.com reports that Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House turns Shirley Jackson’s novel into a story about siblings and their haunted childhood home, literalizing the psychological fear into a house full of hidden ghosts.
According to Polygon.com, the series runs on slow dread rather than jump scares, with eight to ten ghosts tucked into scenes that viewers might miss on first watch. Polygon.com cites Flanagan explaining that some ghosts came from personal phobias, like a tall man in a bowler hat added because one writer fears people on stilts.
Polygon.com reports the show splits Eleanor into two characters, with the mother Olivia carrying instability and Nell showing frailty, leading to the standout “Bent-Neck Lady” episode twist that makes the horror personal.
Polygon.com says Flanagan’s Carrie adaptation sticks closer to the book in most ways but changes the prom scene so Carrie’s friend Emaline takes over her body for much of the massacre. Polygon.com quotes Flanagan saying none of the writers believed the Carrie they created would consciously choose to kill certain innocent characters.
Polygon.com reports the result leaves the prom without a clear moment of Carrie breaking, unlike the intimate horror in Hill House.
The Tea
Polygon.com’s take boils down to this: Flanagan can build care for characters and deliver creeping ghosts, but when the prom moment needed to land the horror, the Carrie series reportedly blinked. Hill House keeps the scares intimate and personal; the other one spreads the blame and loses the punch.