The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) - Perfectly Splendid

 

A visual storytelling gothic opera (Image courtesy of medium.com)

The second installment in The Haunting series created by Mike Flanagan for Netflix, The Haunting of Bly Manor stands toe-to-toe with its predecessor, The Haunting of Hill House.

Launched on Netflix worldwide on Oct 9, The Haunting of Bly Manor is a loose adaptation of Henry James' 1898 novella, The Turn of the Screw. There have been many adaptations, some more direct than others, of James' novel, but none that come close to becoming a homage to James' list of novels and short stories than this series. 

The Haunting of Bly Manor starts off with an American in England looking for work. She enters the office of Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas), a prominent businessman who is looking for a Governess or Au Pair for his niece and nephew who live in Bly, a quaint little suburb three hours away from London city. 

For those that have read The Turn of the Screw, you'll find that the first names for many of the characters have not been changed at all. Henry's niece and nephew, Flora (Amelie Bea Smith) and Miles (Benjamin Evan Aisnworth) Wingrave were orphans after their parents suffered a tragic accident while on a business trip to India. Having the immense burden of taking care of them but wanting nothing to do with them, Henry pushes the responsibility of Flora and Miles and the Bly estate to Danielle (Victoria Pedretti) the Au Pair, and the other employees of the Wingrave estate including Jamie (Amelia Eve), the gardener; Owen Sharma (Rahul Kohli), the cook and Hannah Grose (T'Nia Miller), the housekeeper. 

"Hello, demons. It's ya gurl, Dani" (Image courtesy of Den of Geeks)

There are nine episodes altogether for The Haunting of Bly Manor, and the series starts out typically slow, which is a stark contrast to how the first series started out, and it doesn't pick up in speed anytime throughout. However, the ambiance is still significantly bleak and depressing and the manor and the grounds itself was designed and shot in a way that you're constantly on guard for any jump scares, despite there not being much of it throughout the show. 

The Haunting of Bly Manor brings back several familiar faces from the first installment including Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Henry Thomas, Carla Gugino and Kate Siegel as well as a few new additions that add a wholesome dimension to the list of characters in the series. 

Each character has a story to tell whilst at Bly Manor and the series does well to slowly reveal them. Towards the middle of the series, the scenes become slightly mixed, but if you continue watching, it will all be revealed in episodes seven and eight. Some of the storylines you'll be particularly curious about would be Dani's aversion to mirrors, Owen and Hannah's relationship, Jamie's past, Peter's whereabouts and what happened to Rebecca Jessel. These stories will keep you glued to the episodes, driven by your need to know more. And once you do, despite one or two not worth the time it took to film them, will be worth it (more or less).

The theme of the series is the inability to let go or move on and the storytelling does very well to explain that to you in the mannerisms and scripts of certain characters. 

In terms of the scenes, Flanagan goes back to his original recipe of symmetrically framed shots that place the object either in the center of the screen or on either side with a view of dark hallways, foreboding staircases and mysterious rooms, which for the uninitiated, will completely miss, but for those that have been trained in the art of watching The Haunting of Hill House, will find themselves completely transfixed at these dark areas, and searching for anything hidden within. 

Unfortunately, Flanagan doesn't use the Hill House attention grabbing details to fill the spaces with anything (although one or two do have outlines or images of something lurking), so we're sorely disappointed in our squinting efforts. 

"Dead doesn't mean gone" a recurring theme in the series. (Image courtesy of Gold Derby)

As you progress through The Haunting of Bly Manor, you'll realize that (if you're an avid reader of the works of Henry James) a lot of the names of secondary characters and even episode eight itself is taken from his other works. Episode eight is adapted from The Romance of Certain Old Clothes, while plots and names are adapted from Sir Edmund Orme and The Jolly Corner - all three particularly good horror stories and part of Henry James' collection of ghost stories. 

There are a lot of little details in the series that you should pay attention to that will be explained as the series progresses. These include Flora's dolls, Flora's doll house, Flora's use of the term "tucked in", Miles' strange attitude and the weird phone calls at odd hours with no one on the other end of the line save for the heavy breathing. But there's also a reason why many of these small, miniscule little details are connected to Flora and towards the end of the series, it will be revealed why. 

Now, after finishing the series, there are a lot of things Asian Does Horror was happy and or contented with, but there were a few details that we were not. 

One of the things we were disappointed in was the pacing of the story. It was slow and grinding in the first eight episodes and then it felt like a lot of things were dumped in the last episode. Also, we were hoping that Flora's dollhouse played a bigger role in the series. Similarly so, the identity of the Lady of the Lake should have been played out slower and across several episodes instead of being lumped in episode eight and Perdita Willoughby's ghost should have had a more prominent role in the series altogether. However, despite all this, were weren't nitpicking too much and were deeply satisfied with the ending. Though, we thought that it wasn't fair to the other characters that had spent so much time with Flora and not have her recognize them or connect with them better. 

Victoria Pedretti did "Perfectly Splendid" (Image courtesy of IndieWire)

All in all, we found that there were more positives than negatives for The Haunting of Bly Manor and we already hear that Mike Flanagan has a new horror project that has already started production called, Midnight Mass. If it's anything like The Haunting series, we'll be extremely excited to watch that and do a full review of it similar to the video and blog reviews for The Haunting of Bly Manor. 

Asian Does Horror gives The Haunting of Bly Manor 👻👻👻👻 ghost emojis out of five. 

Do check out the short video review of the series here.