TheScreenReview

Going into these the last five episodes of The Haunting of Hill House, my main questions were: what’s up with the red door, what really happened to the children’s mother, and why is the house haunted in the first place? Two of the three were answered throughout these next five episodes, which leaves room for another season if they decide to make one.

Before I talk about the individual episodes, I’ll just start by addressing the show and these last five episodes, as a whole. Now, I’m probably the last person to finish this series. At first, I just thought it was just because I’m a bit of a wimp but, when I got to these last five episodes, I found myself moving through them much faster. They follow directly on from one another, which made it much harder to stop watching. The first five were more self-contained, and I actually liked taking a break between episodes to just sit with each individual character for a while.

These last five episodes have really made me appreciate the slower pacing in the first five – and I don’t mean that in a bad way. It was only when all the children came together that I realised just how much depth each character has. They have that depth because the writers took the time to flesh out each character individually, and the last five episodes work so incredibly well as a result.

I forgot to mention in my review of episodes 1-5 how much I love this show’s opening titles. I’m a big fan of opening titles in general. I don’t know if that weird thing to be a fan of, but this show’s titles is one of my favourites. If you read my previous review, then you’ll know that the show’s pilot didn’t leave too much of an impression on me at first, but you know what did? That’s right – the opening titles. They are very spooky and atmospheric and in my official reviewer opinion, they are, in fact, pretty rad. They’re probably half the reason I came back to the show in the first place and I simply couldn’t do another review without saying so.

Now let’s get into the individual episodes. Strap in – this is a long one.

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In episode 6, “Two Storms,” our main characters are finally all in the one place – thanks Nell. The episode is a well-needed standstill after the harrowing “Bent-Neck Lady,” as the characters come together to mourn Nell. Now we finally have a chance to see all the messed-up family dynamics clashing together at full force. The characters reflect on their memories of Nell, frustrating one another with their conflicting defence mechanisms.

Steve interrogates their father in search of some much-needed answers, and they attempt to piece together what really happened to Nell. Steve believes Nell must have inherited some sort of mental illness from their mother, whilst Luke maintains Nell’s death wasn’t a suicide – that it was the result of something supernatural.

Theo confronts Shirley, revealing she took Steven’s money. Shirley’s husband admits he also took the money and Shirley, who somehow held herself together throughout the first five episodes, finally had the breakdown I’d been waiting to see. Later in the episode, Shirley is shocked to find her husband and Theo in close quarters. It appears as though Theo is attempting to kiss Shirley’s husband, which doesn’t make sense. It isn’t explained in this episode, but I expect it will be the source of some drama to come.

In a discussion with Luke, the father agrees that the house had somehow killed Nell. Luke pushes him to confirm that their mother hadn’t killed herself either but he refuses. Steven joins in the argument, also appearing to believe their father is still hiding information from them about that night.

There was little new information provided in the flashbacks this episode, which simply told the story of one particularly stormy night in the house where Nell goes missing. The father sees an unexplained ghostly apparition of his wife whilst they search for Nell, starting to hint at the mysteries to come centred around the children’s mother.

This episode was a perfect opportunity for the characters to reconcile and express their struggles to one another, allowing them to begin moving forward – and hopefully bring them closer to finding out what actually happened to the mother.

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In many ways, episode seven, “Eulogy,” feels like the second instalment of “Two Storms,” directly following on from both the flash-back timeline and modern-day timeline of the previous episode. Like “Two Storms,” episode seven is more focused on the progression of family relationships than it is on adding much to the haunted house plotline.

The supernatural side of the story is mostly reflected throughout the flashbacks – which shift attention back to the mysterious room with the red door. At one point, the father vents out his growing frustrations with the house by unsuccessfully attempting to force his way through the door, but it remains inexplicably impenetrable. The house is full of water damage after the storm in the previous episode, which pushes back the repairs considerably – as if the house is refusing to let the family leave.

We also see signs of the mother reaching a breaking point, when the father wakes up to see her pressing a knife to his throat. The father also notices her drawings of their future “forever house” have a remarkably similar layout to Hill House. Later in the episode, one of the water-damaged walls is demolished to reveal a decaying human skeleton – which is a good indicator that there is some sort of backstory for the house’s supernatural happenings. Whether this backstory will ruin the ‘spooky’ factor of the house remains to be seen, but this discovery (along with the mother’s descent into hysteria) shows a definite step towards finding some much-needed answers.

In the modern-day timeline, the episode focuses on the father, Hugh, on the day of Nell’s funeral. Throughout the episode, he interacts with each of the children individually, giving the audience an insight into each of the withstanding parent-child relationships. He sees and interacts with a vision of the children’s mother, which he tells Luke about towards the end of the episode, where he implies that she’s just a projection of his grief. Luke also experiences a vision earlier in the episode of Nell at her grave. In their later conversation, Hugh implies that Luke’s vision, unlike his own, was likely real in some sense. Steve was the one with Luke when the vision actually occurred, and he maintained that it was due to some sort of hereditary mental illness – warning Luke that if he wasn’t careful, he would end up like Nell and their mother.

Later in the episode, Luke goes missing along with Shirley’s wallet and Theo’s car, and the others assume the worst. Shirley and Steve go out looking for Luke and back at Shirley’s house, Theo and Hugh find the model of the “forever home” has been destroyed. Theo then experiences a similar vision of Nell to Luke’s.

In this episode, we finally get to see flashbacks of what happened between Hugh and the police on the day after the family fled the house. The episode concludes with the revelation that Hugh found the red door open on the night they ran from Hill House, but he conceals this fact in his statement to the police. I can only assume that the room has something to do with the mother’s death, but I suppose I’ll just have to wait and see.

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Now, because I don’t hate myself, I have not watched a single episode of this show at night. Well, I hadn’t, until I watched episode eight, “Witness Marks.” In fact, I watched this episode just before I went to bed – like the idiot I am. I actually thought I was going to get away with it, but the jumpscare of Nell screaming in the car got me… and then the ending really got me.

Anyway, this episode we’re back to Steve, and we finally get more information about what happened between him and his wife – which he had been awfully tight-lipped about up until this point. Steve’s father encourages him to reconcile with his wife, but Steve dismisses him, still holding his father accountable for his mother’s death. He implies that his father may have abused her, as some of her injuries that the police report documented couldn’t have been self-inflicted. Regardless – in keeping with his belief that their family is mentally ill – Steve also blames his father simply because “the one person who was supposed to care about her didn’t do a goddamn thing to get her help.”

Steve tells Hugh that he had a vasectomy right out of college because he never wanted to pass on the family’s mental illness. He had lied about this to his wife, which is what lead to their separations. In turn, Hugh disputes Steve’s ‘mental illness’ theory, telling him the house itself is the real danger. He implies that the house had some personal vendetta against their family in particular and tells Steve the house is especially dangerous for him because of what he wrote in his book. In an effort to convince Steve, Hugh reveals that many of the events Steve wrote as fact simply weren’t possible. A man Steve saw fixing a clock was never there, and the treehouse, which was featured in a number of flashbacks of Steve’s memories, was never there. This discussion occurs as the family continues their search for Luke, who they discover may be on his way to burn down Hill House.

Back at Shirley’s house, we see Shirley’s marriage problems continue after she saw Theo and her husband almost kissing in episode six. Left alone in her home, Shirley hears repeated knocks on her front door, but each time she checks outside, she doesn’t see anyone there. She convinces herself that it’s just kids messing around. When Theo comes back, the two fight about what had really happened with Shirley’s husband. The fight is interrupted by repeated knocking from all over the house. A shaken Shirley still insists its kids stirring up trouble, but Theo dismisses her, saying, “you know it wasn’t.” Both of our sceptics, Shirley and Steve, are therefore forced to face the possibility that their supernatural encounters are in fact real. As we drive closer to the end of the season, these realisations will hopefully help the family become a united front.

Shirley and Theo both see the same apparition of Nell screaming (which frightened me half to death) whilst arguing in the car. Theo breaks down and explains to Shirley how touching Nell’s dead body had made her feel completely empty, as if she were also dead. This scene was probably the highlight of the episode; it was incredibly emotional, and Theo’s descriptions of what death felt like were truly horrifying.

The flashbacks in the episode continue to show the mother’s descent into some sort of madness. We also hear more backstory about the Hill family, who apparently met in a mental asylum – nice.

The episode ends with Luke entering the house, pouring gasoline everywhere and attempting to light in on fire. Oh boy did I have chills. From the moment the house lit up as it had done for Nell, I was a goner. Now, I know I said in my previous review that Luke’s episode wasn’t my favourite, but I’ll admit I’ve grown quite fond of him over the past few episodes – though I’m not sure I realised it until this scene. I was genuinely distraught over the possibility of Luke dying, and if it hadn’t been for John Mulaney’s New in Town airing on TV that night, (like a gift from God himself) I’m not sure I would’ve slept a wink. Any episode that can make me feel that amount emotion is a good one in my book.

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Episode nine, “Screaming Meemies” was the episode that I’d been waiting for. The entire episode occurs in the flashback timeline, showing the mother’s perspective of the events leading up to her death. The mother, Olivia, experiences a vision towards the beginning of the episode, of an adult version of Nell lying dead, with Luke on the floor next to her with a needle in his arm – which was all kinds of disturbing. This vision instils a sense of fear in Olivia for the twins going forward. She tells her husband about the vision, and he assumes it was a dream but she doesn’t seem convinced.

Olivia often sees spirits around the house. One woman disturbs her in particular, Poppy Hill – who, as we learnt last episode, met the house’s original owner in an insane asylum. The two discuss the pain of losing a child, and Poppy describes in vivid detail a dream in which she killed her own child. It’s implied that this ‘dream’ Poppy speaks of may have actually been real. She attempts to manipulate Olivia into violent action against the twins (thereby attempting to ‘save’ them from the darkness of the outside world.) This is when Olivia wakes up with a knife to her husband’s throat.

In another particularly disturbing scene, Olivia speaks to the twins before bed and Nell asks, “what if I dream that you kill me?” Luke follows this with, “and what if I’m so sad and scared of the dark that I put poison in me?” Nell continues with an eerie premonition – “you send us out there to the dark and the dark gets us – a piece at a time, over years and years and years until I’m on a silver table… and Luke is cold and dead on the floor with a needle in his arm, and it was you that killed us because you sent us out there in the dark.” When Nell asks “would you wake us up from a dream like that?” Olivia replies, “of course.” Steve walks in and interrupts her, and the twins aren’t actually there. This vision gives us many answers about Olivia’s mindset at the time. Her visions all indicated that her children needed saving from the pain and darkness in their futures, which is an idea Olivia becomes obsessed with moving forwards.

She bumps up her trip to see her sister out of fear for her mental state, but lies to the family, and simply takes a cab to the nearby motel instead. In a nice piece of foreshadowing, the husband discovers the mould killer has been ineffective on the storm-damaged walls, which had regrown. That night, Olivia takes a cab back to the house. Shirley finds her in the kitchen and notices that something is off. Olivia visits the twins and discovers Luke’s ‘imaginary friend’ Abigail is with them. Olivia invites the three of them to have a tea party with her, and she takes them through into the room with the red door, which lies open. Shirley wakes their father out of concern, and he finds the mould-killer in the kitchen where Olivia made the tea and assumes the worst. He finds the twins beds empty and runs to the room with the red door.

Abigail drinks the tea and starts choking, and Olivia maintains the belief that she’s freeing them from a life of pain. Hugh runs into the room, grabbing his wife by the neck and pushing her against the wall when she objects to him stopping the twins from drinking. This aligns with the injuries on the police report that lead Steve to believe Hugh may have been abusive. When the mother wakes up, most of the children are already in the car. She makes her way to Steve’s room, who Hugh has gone to rescue. Poppy materialises once more, telling Olivia that her husband wants to take the kids away from her into the darkness. Olivia twists the door handle around – which we saw from Steve’s perspective in the first episode – but another ghost distracts her, telling her that the Poppy is lying. When the mother moves away from the door, Hugh escapes with Steve.

When they drive away, Olivia returns to Abigail’s body. Abigail appears as a ghost, and Olivia follows her up the spiral staircase, where Poppy appears once more. Poppy convinces Olivia that she’s dreaming and that when she wakes up, the children will be asleep in their beds. In an attempt to wake up, Olivia jumps. In one final blow to my fragile heart, the episode cuts to the scene where the family first moved into the house, and Olivia insists that her husband must go on (upstairs) without her.

Once again this was an incredible episode, and in no way do I feel that the backstory/reasoning behind the spooky events (as revealed so far) has ruined the show – as I so often feel in horrors.

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Onto the finale, “Silence Lay Steadily.” This last episode wasn’t my favourite episode, but that’s not to say I wasn’t impressed. As I addressed in my last review, it’s no easy feat to provide a satisfying conclusion to a horror story. Somehow, this episode managed to wrap up most of the loose ends in an interesting, emotional final hurrah, that gives each character enough screen time to say a proper farewell. The episode provides answers to enough of the remaining mysteries to make all the buildup worthwhile, but it doesn’t drown the audience in too much detail to the point where the show simply isn’t scary anymore. To accomplish all that in an hour of quality television is impressive.

The episode starts with the scene from episode one where Shirley and Nell try to unlock the red door, but this time, we also get to see that Theo was on the other side. She can hear them, but they can’t hear her. This hints at a revelation that occurs later in the episode. We then see Steve with his wife, who is somehow pregnant. Steve is struggling to write a sequel to Hill House, retelling this season’s modern-day timeline – he is up to the part of the story where he and his father arrive at the house looking for Luke. We then follow Steve and Hugh back at that time, climbing up the spiral staircase to the room with the red door, which is locked. When his father turns away, Steve sees the door open, and Luke is inside on the ground. Steve runs through the door and it slams shut behind him.

When Steve is writing the second book, his wife mentions that Luke had died – which was very mean of the show’s writers. Steve says he doesn’t remember what happened after the door closed, that he doesn’t remember getting out of the house or reconciling with his wife or how she got pregnant. Steve realises his wife and everything he’s seeing isn’t real, that he’s actually in the room with the red door. Nicely done writers, you had me fooled for a second. Luke is trapped in a similar dream state to Steve, back in the events of episode four. This is a different version where the girl he went after came back for him. She tries to convince Luke to take drugs with her and he starts to realise something is wrong. Nell appears, pulling him out of the vision in time for him to wake up and see Steve enter the room.

Shirley and Theo enter the house and they both have similar visions. Theo’s depicts her telling her lover about a time her mother had spanked her for throwing a rock through a greenhouse window. She puts on her gloves but she doesn’t remember why, and she doesn’t feel anything when she touches the woman’s skin. Eventually, Nell pulls her out of it and she wakes up. Shirley’s vision is different, revealing new information that had only been hinted about throughout the season – that years ago, she had cheated on her husband with a man she met in a bar.

When the girls wake up, the siblings are all together in the red room and they attempt to resuscitate Luke, to no avail. Luke wakes up in the red room to see his mother, along with a young Nell and Abigail sitting at the table as they did during the tea party. Olivia asks him to join them, but the young Nell warns him not to. Luke tells his mother he doesn’t want to be dead, but Olivia insists that he had been knocking on the red door for years – thus knocking on the door to his own death. Nice metaphor. Nell eventually breaks through and Luke wakes up to see Steve and Theo struggling to open the red door.

The siblings all see the same apparition of Nell, who confirms Shirley’s suspicions that they’d all been in the room before. She describes the room as being the ‘stomach’ of the house, revealing that it had been Theo’s dance studio, her own toy room, Olivia’s reading room, Steve’s gaming room, the family room for Shirley and a tree house for Luke. The siblings use this opportunity to apologise to Nell and say their goodbyes. It’s one of the episodes more touching scenes, but Nell assures them that she’s not dead, that pieces of her are still scattered throughout their lives.

Hugh wakes up to a vision of a decaying Poppy. She threatens him but is stopped and dismissed by Olivia. The parents speak, and Olivia asks him what he was doing all that time away, and he responds, “I was holding the door closed” because he knew “there were monsters on the other side that wanted the rest of [their] family.” Olivia argues the true monsters are the ones in the outside world. She still blames him for taking the children from her, and for their suffering. She insists, “this is our forever house, it always was” and that they would always be safe in it. He asks her to open the red door and to let them go out into the world. She refuses, as she’d be left alone. He offers to stay there with her, as long as she opens the door. She finally agrees, and the children are able to escape.

Steven remains behind with Hugh, who has something more he wishes to reveal. The two observe the scene where Hugh found Olivia dead all those years ago. It turns out the caretakers were there that night, as their daughter had snuck out of her bed. Their daughter is revealed to be Abigail, and they find her dead body on the floor. Abigail’s ghost appears, and Hugh also sees Olivia’s ghost materialise by her body. The caretakes talk Hugh out of burning the house down, saying they would keep Abigail’s death a secret as long as he let them stay on as sole caretakers of the house. After these revelations, Steve and Hugh apologise to each other for the secrets they kept. Hugh says goodbye, leaving the house to Steve as he joins Olivia and Nell in the red room.

In the final scenes, Steve apologies to his wife, and the two reconcile. Shirley tells her husband about the time she cheated on him in hopes that the two can move forward. Theo moves out of Shirley’s house with the help of the girl she’s been seeing, and she throws out her gloves, choosing instead to feel. We see Luke celebrate two years of being clean, and in the background, we hear Steve’s narration of what we can assume is the second book in the making. The caretakers return to Hill House on their deathbeds to be with Abigail, and everything is tied up in a neat little bundle.

The finale didn’t delve too deep into the mechanics of the house, which I actually like. It’s implied that the house feeds on its inhabitants somehow, collecting them as ghosts. It doesn’t explain how this began, simply choosing to focus on the Crain family and their emotional connections, as they were the real draw to the show in the first place. Perhaps they’ll delve into how the house works more in the next season – if there is a next season.

It’s hard to tell how they would proceed with a second season, but there have been talks about potentially exploring other familys’ experiences with Hill House. Creator, Mike Flanagan, released a recent statement stating that he doesn’t feel the need to revisit the Crain family, as he wants to “remember them the way [they] left them, and leave them to their lives.” In some ways this is disappointing; I’ve grown quite attached to these characters over the course of the season, so of course it would be nice to see more of them. But, like Flanagan, I’m perfectly happy to leave them here, safe in the knowledge that the worst of their troubles are behind them.