(no subject)

[impy]

Made a decent dent in my "to do" list of stuff I should do but didn't want to do. My adulting, let me not bore you with it. I did get my review of my LT Early Review book up finally (huzzah!) and it was one I really enjoyed but I might review it here later with more detail. I also might not because I am spectacularly lazy so we'll see how it goes.


Ozma and I finished Hill House and unlike Cass, I think I enjoyed it. I say think because it feels weird to say you enjoy something where the vast majority of the time everyone involved (on screen) is freakin' miserable.

But I did. I think it was really well done and it balanced the flashbacks and the current story and it definitely relied more on creeping dread and terror than it did on actual horror. As someone who has not enjoyed horror's detour into torture porn, I'm happy to have something I can watch without feeling physically ill. I'm not saying it doesn't have its moments of ick; one of the characters runs a funeral home and there are decaying ghosts. But I can only think of two major jump scares that got me and one I was even warned about beforehand (not by Cass). I was just so caught up in the story/scene that it didn't occur to me that this was going to be the OHMYGLOB scene until after it happened.


I do agree with Cass that I don't really see how they'd swing a second season unless they decided to go into the history of the house itself. And honestly, I'm not really sure I'd want them to do so. As it is, maybe not knowing why the house is so evil is better than them trying and failing to set up a why. I really don't want them to go back on their happy ending, or as happy as one can get when two members of the family have died before the end of the series.

Because the show does give the characters a reasonably happy ending. Luke celebrates his 2 years clean/sober and his family is with him. Nell rescues her siblings from the house and the caretakers die but are reunited with their lost children. Technically I believe this would absolve Steve of the promise to keep the house and not burn that SOB to the ground since they were only keeping it for the Dudleys to make up for Abigail.


Cass kept warning me that ep 9 would fuck me up and it... didn't? I think I'd built it up in my head to be one thing and then in reality it was basically the Liv episode I'd wondered if they were going to do. It definitely dealt the most with the ghosts themselves but it wasn't the mindfuck people kept insinuating it would be. Either that or I missed something/I am a monster. Not sure which.

The last episode got me, though. The reveal of the Red Room was pretty damn awesome and so was the fact that Steve had seen ghosts as a kid, but unlike his siblings, he never realized that's what they were. That was worth the price of a month of Netflix alone, really. And then I watched Netflix's Meet The Crains and it spoils that. Like wtf. I also really liked how it circled back around with Hugh and how he went from being a bit of a rambling mess to being sharp as a tack as soon as he realized just how much danger Luke was in. This definitely called back to how fast he pulled himself together when Nell called him. Hugh was a mess after Hill House, it's true. And he should have really gotten the entire family out when he was sending Liv to Janet's, as in he should have driven them all somewhere far away for at least a weekend, but his reasoning with Liv was just heartbreaking.


I think my favorites were Nell, Theo, and Shirley but not always in that order because the twins as kids were also adorable as hell and little bb!Luke was just the cutest thing ever.

Also, Abigail broke my heart and I knew, just knew what was going to happen and it still did.

tl;dr: fantastic casting, creeping dread, would recommend honestly.