Mike Flanagan’s storytelling ability has grown by leaps and bounds. Oculus (2013), Hush (2016) and Gerald’s Game (2017) show he is adept in chamber horror settings that are characterised by psychological terror emanating from a small cast. The Haunting of Hill House (2018) and Doctor Sleep (2019) are clear demonstrations he is perfectly splendid with a tapestry of characters. It is how he weaves compelling stories through his many larger-than-life characters that is a class act. He is fast becoming a master storyteller who can breathe new life into well-worn classical tales. With The Haunting of Bly Manor, Flanagan not only uses Henry James’s 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw as the main storyline, he also weaves other Henry James’s classical gothic ghost stories into one cauldron of unsettling feels. But I have to say it took me a while to warm up to this and at the end of episode 3 I nearly wanted to throw my hands up in sheer exasperation and give up.
If The Haunting of Hill House maintains a deft balance between the horror and the drama, The Haunting of Bly Manor tips the balance over the drama elements and totally forgot about the scares. The initial sluggish pace also does it no favours. The casting of Victoria Pedretti in the role of governess feels off and it made me miss the iridescent Deborah Kerr in the same role in Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), which in my humble opinion, does a much better job in adapting Henry James’s horror exemplar (which I am currently reading). The Haunting of Bly Manor is affectingly steeped in loss, resignation and regret, the ghosts of memory plaguing the characters for eternity, and the slow-release of revelations somewhat pull it together, while satisfying and even poignant, lacks the emotional thunder reminiscent of The Haunting of Hill House.
Danielle “Dani” Clayton (Victoria Pedretti) applies for the job of a live-in au pair to two orphans, the niece and nephew of Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas), Flora (Amelie Smith) and Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth). The mansion is run like clockwork by Hannah Grose (T’Nia Miller), with the help of the cook, Owen (Rahul Kohli) and the groundskeeper, JMie (Amelia Eve). Before long, the emotionally fragile Dani starts to suspect there is something very, very with her precocious charges and notices a mysterious man lurking at the windows. The man is Peter Quint (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), Henry Wingrave’s former valet, who had mysteriously disappeared after embezzling from his employer. Quint had romanced the former governess, Rebecca Jessel (Tahirah Sharif), who had drowned in the lake (more like of a large pond) on the grounds. Dani gradually begins to realize that there is something seriously wrong at Bly Manor.
Yes, there’s something wrong with Bly Manor, but I wouldn’t say it’s serious. Once I came to terms that this isn’t going to replicate the heights of Hill House, I began to see it for what it is – a doomed love story. But even as a love story it carried only a single grace note across 9 episodes. You don’t need approximately 500 minutes to tell a one-note love story. And it’s becoming a tired cliché for characters in overly serious horror dramas not to realise they’re dead or dying. The moment I saw a particular character’s vacant gaze and never eating anything, I already surmised the character’s deathly outcome which happened some time ago. But I have to confess the episode that finally laid out her demise for her own knowledge was excellent. The present tense in that episode is always shifting and uncertain, and inevitably haunted by the past.
Bly Manor doesn’t serve up compellingly binge-worthy episodes (some episodes felt too bloated for my taste); I find it easier to catch a couple of episodes a night unlike Hill House. It may lack inventive scares, but it has great character development. Forget about malevolent shadows, creaking doors and long hallways; the faster you forget Hill House’s long shadow, the easier it will be for you to appreciate this for what it is. For me, this is just too much of This is Us and too little of The Shining. I wished I could say it’s “perfectly splendid”, but I can live with just splendid.
Written by Daniel Chiam
BookMyShow Singapore 
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