The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐  

Mike Flanagan who was responsible for penning recent horror tales and adaptations such as The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald's Game, and Doctor Sleep, seems to be making a name for himself in this genre. Here he is back with an original tale for Netflix's The Haunting of Bly Manor. So far his stories and involvements have been what I deem as soft core horror, in the sense that they rely more on the story and the paranormal happenings to bring in the chills rather than all out gore and cheap jump scares to get the effect. This is good and bad. Good in that it means we can expect more story and character build up to keep us interested, and bad in the sense that I always feel that something is being held back in order not to gross out the viewer. I suppose we can always turn to series like American Horror Story if we wish to be totally grossed out in its torture porn approach.

The Haunting of Bly Manor can be considered a follow up to the previous Haunting of Hill House although both are pretty much independent stories. If I were to compare the two series, I would say that Bly Manor has the edge over Hill House as I had always felt Hill House's story and number of characters made the story feel convoluted. Here at Bly Manor, the story progresses in a more linear path although it did break a bit for some lengthy flash backs and confusing mix of timelines to reflect the various characters memories. Bly Manor here is supposed to be somewhere in Essex England, and naturally haunted. We follow the slow discovery of its secrets in the eyes of a young American girl who applied for the job as nanny to two orphaned kids staying at the Manor. There are nine episodes in all, and the initial episodes were a little slow in pace. However, when things pick up later on with more revelations, the series became far more addictive to watch. The performances all round is okay, nothing really that stands out except for perhaps British actress T'Nia Miller as the faithful and kind hearted house keeper Mrs Grose. Henry Thomas (ET's Elliot all grown up now) whose handling of a British accent was pretty atrocious and so often sounded very forced.

As I have mentioned earlier, do not expect gore and gross out horror here. Just an interesting tale of ghosts lurking around the Manor and its grounds. Do not be distracted by too much logic questions as this is after all a ghost story and hence, you will definitely need to give a lot of indulgence to plot logic and characters' actions. Put those aside and you will have some delightful hours following the story of By Manor which would seem to be most appropriate for this Halloween season.