Created by Mike Flanagan.
Starring Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson Cohen, Amelia Eve, T’Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, Amelia Bea Smith, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth and Henry Thomas.
SYNOPSIS:
A young American visiting London, is hired to as the new governess at Bly Manor, a sprawling Gothic mansion whose walls hide more than just secrets.
Henry James’ acclaimed horror novella The Turn of the Screw has been subject to numerous adaptations over the decades. Some, like The Innocents (which we looked at earlier this month), are acclaimed as horror classics, while others, like the 2020 effort The Turning, are not so much. Thus it fell to the modern-day horror master (and monologue enthusiast) Mike Flanagan, who, following the success of The Haunting of Hill House, took on James’s story for his follow-up series, The Haunting of Bly Manor.
As with Hill House, Bly Manor does not attempt to act as a wholly faithful adaptation of its source material. Instead, Flanagan and the writing team use the novella’s basic premise, in addition to other writings by James, to craft a new story that honours the author’s work while also setting its own path. Although Bly Manor does follow the original story closer than Hill House followed its source material, retaining the premise of a governess being hired to care for two children in an English Manor, albeit with the time period shifted from the 1800s to the 1980s.
While Flanagan spearheads Bly Manor, prior commitments prevented him from directing and overseeing the entire series as he did with Hill House, with him only serving as writer and director on the first episode. However, the various directors assembled masterfully maintain a cohesive style and tone throughout, retaining Flanagan’s particular brand of horror (complete with his beloved long monologues) while imbuing their episodes with their own directorial touches. As with the previous Haunting series, Bly Manor does not opt for straight-up horror and instead takes an approach that melds spine-tingling supernatural chills with heart-wrenching, emotionally charged drama.
The horror elements are presented in much the same way as Hill House, with Bly Manor sharing the same bone-chilling atmosphere, excellent Gothic production design and beautiful cinematography that makes the darkness of the halls of the house pour from the screen. However, more prominent this time are jump scares, with Bly Manor using them far more frequently, but without the unsettling build-up of the previous series that would often be far more frightening than the scares themselves. There are only so many times you can show a glowing-eyed ghost suddenly appear with a loud clanging sound in one episode before the shock wears off.
Quite simply, Bly Manor just isn’t as scary as its predecessor, with the frequent jump scares soon starting to feel like a crutch for the show to lean on. While Hill House balanced its horror elements with the dramatic, Bly Manor leans much heavier towards the drama, often at the expense of the horror. However, while I certainly would have liked more horror, I honestly didn’t mind the more dramatic focus, with many of the shows best moments coming in these dramatic scenes, thanks primarily to the brilliant performances of the cast and the poignant themes concerning memory, isolation and love that run throughout.
The cast features a mixture of returning faces from Hill House and newcomers who all deliver great layered performances that will leave you coming to genuinely care for the characters. Victoria Pedretti (one of my favourites from Hill House) is simply brilliant as Dani, the new governess of Bly Manor, the actress excelling at creating a likeable and sympathetic protagonist struggling to escape her traumatic past and accept aspects of herself that she has tried to keep hidden. It’s another beautiful heartfelt performance that is the heart and soul of the series, with Pedretti once more emerging as my favourite among the ensemble.
The supporting cast is also on top form, with T’Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, and Amelia Eve creating engaging characters you quickly come to adore, with the strong chemistry among them making them come across as a loving surrogate family who you wish was your own. Kohli, in particularly, wins extra points thanks to his variety of cheesy but charming food-based puns and a genuinely moving speech eulogising his mother that is among the shows most finest scenes.
As with Hill House, Bly Manor also boasts some superb child actors, in this case, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth and Amelia Bea Smith, who, despite their young ages, manage to create funny, charming and, in the case of Ainsworth, genuinely creepy characters. But, I warn you, get ready to hear Smith’s declaration of how things are “perfectly splendid” ringing in your ears for months. It’s funny the first three times, but dear god, does it get old fast.
If any cast members stumble a tad, it’s Henry Thomas and Oliver Jackson Cohen. The two still deliver strong performances, especially Jackson-Cohen, whose charming yet sinister persona flips your sympathies from episode to episode. What undermines their work is their choice of accents. The English Jackson-Cohen adopts a Scottish accent that, while not the worst (we Scottish are very sensitive about our accent being done by non-Scots), comes off as an awkward, gravelly-voiced Glaswegian stereotype. It’s still one of the better attempts at a Scottish accent I’ve heard. At least it’s not Brigadoon.
American actor Henry Thomas, on the other hand, has his otherwise strong performance undermined by a hilarious English accent that often has him sounding like a drunk James Mason playing an even more drunk King Charles III. Again, it’s an otherwise decent performance, but the accent does sometimes leave you snickering when you shouldn’t be. Although it does make his performance entertainingly memorable, especially when he is forced into a war of words with his hallucinations of a grinning dark doppelgänger.
Pacing-wise, Bly Manor is very much going to work based on personal preferences. The first five episodes are a slow burn that is relatively light on horror (save for the jump scares) and on moving the plot forward, opting for a greater focus on developing the characters. The slow pacing sometimes can make it seem that the show is stretching itself out to reach 9 episodes, with more than a few long stretches of silence or a big speech sometimes feeling like padding. However, in all honesty, I had come to enjoy the actor’s performances so much that I honestly had no issues with the story being stretched out. I just wanted to spend more time with these characters.
The eighth episode is the only instance where I think some cutting should have been done. An origin story of sorts for the titular manor and the ghostly “Lady in the Lake” that haunts it. The episode, while well-acted and delivering some vital backstory, does kill the momentum of the main story by coming in between the cliffhanger ending of episode 7 and the finale. A better approach might have been to cut the episode into parts to perhaps use as pre-credits scenes throughout the series, allowing it to retain its impact on the main story without having to derail it for an hour. This is merely my view, and the episode is otherwise fine, with entertaining acting performances and a gorgeous black-and-white visual style.
Brilliantly acted by a cast who I grew to adore so much that I didn’t want to say goodbye. A dramatic story that, while often favouring emotional drama over ghostly horror, still made for a captivating and heart-wrenching tale of loneliness, memory and love. And masterfully directed by the directing team, who create and maintain a consistently spooky atmosphere throughout while never forgetting the emotional core of the story. While it might not be the TV horror masterpiece that Hill House was, The Haunting of Bly Manor is still among the better pieces of long-form TV horror out there.
Graeme Robertson
