MIKE FLANAGAN GIVES NEW LIFE TO EDGAR ALLAN POE TALES IN “THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER.”

Ever since I read “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “Annabel Lee” in seventh grade, I have been obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and stories. I don’t know exactly why, but I have been obsessed with all things dark, macabre, and terrifying since a young age.

And, ever since I watched Mike Flanagan’s feature film, “Hush,” and his first Netflix horror mini-series, “The Haunting of Hill House,” I’ve kept a close watch for more of his work. I’ve watched every mini-series he’s released on Netflix (“The Haunting of Bly Manor,” “Midnight Mass,” and “The Midnight Club”) since then.

I’m sure you could imagine how excited I was when I came across the trailer for Flanagan’s newest mini-series, “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Two of my favorite horror masterminds, in one!

Warning: the rest of this article will contain spoilers for the show.

  Photos from web

I love that this adaptation takes place in the present day, rather than the period in which Poe wrote all his stories. I’ve always felt like Flanagan’s work had a Poe-like feel to it, so he was perfect for this newest work.

Immediately, I noticed that all the titles of the episodes (aside from Episode One, “A Midnight Dreary) were named after Poe’s short stories: “The Masque of the Red Death,” “Murder in the Rue Morgue,” “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Goldbug,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and finally, “The Raven.”

The story of the mini-series follows twins Roderick and Madeline Usher as they rise to power as the CEO and COO of Fortunado Pharmaceuticals, a company that manufactures an opioid drug named “Ligadone.” The show begins with the Ushers attending a funeral for Roderick’s three eldest children, who all died a week after his youngest three children. We are shown the twins’ journey, as well as the children’s untimely deaths, through a series of flashbacks to their upbringing, their takeover of Fortunado Pharmaceuticals, and up to the present day.

At the end of the show, we learn that on New Year’s Eve of 1979, Roderick and Madeline trapped former Fortunado CEO Rufus Griswold behind a brick wall (an allusion to Poe’s short story, “The Cask of Amontillado”). Afterward, they meet a strange woman named Verna at a bar where they are trying to establish an alibi. 

Verna somehow knows their secret and asks if they want to make a deal with her. The deal was essentially that they could achieve success in whatever they wanted, but their bloodline had to end with them, and since they were “brought into the world together” as twins they also had to die together.

Each episode pays wonderful homage to the short story it is titled for, with each ending in one of Roderick’s children’s gruesome deaths as they play out the fate of each of Poe’s tales. I absolutely adored the structuring of the series, the modern spin on the classic horror tales, and the thrilling, engaging screenplay and cinematography – and highly recommend the series to all horror and thriller fans. I give this series 4.5/5 “Poes.”

Poe graphic by Tony Acker