Mike Flanagan returns to his Haunting Netflix series with The Haunting of Bly Manor, and has promised big scares for fans, but does the second series compare to The Haunting of Hill House? Is it scarier?
Flanagan has become a massive name amongst horror fans, but his filmography has been strong from the start. Earlier works of Flanagan's include Oculus and Before I Wake; the director's relationship with Netflix began when Hush became a sleeper hit on the platform. Later, he asserted his position as a force to be reckoned with Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story, which was green-lit through season 13 in 2020, and also was announced to be getting a spin-off series, American Horror Stories, on Hulu.
Flanagan is a superb storyteller, with deft knowledge of atmosphere and characters, which are two of the most important facets for a supernatural horror movie or ghost story to have. Hill House, but is it really?
The Haunting of Hill House was relentless with jump scares, thrilling audiences from start to finish. Not only did it feature a wealth of scares and the now-iconic Bent-Neck Lady, but it told a good story. Like Bly Manor, The Haunting of Hill House was based on another Gothic horror classic, Shirley Jackson's novel of the same name. Also similarly, Hill House and Bly Manor are two out of several adaptations of their respective source stories, and Hill House was considered one of the best to take on Jackson's novel. Bly Manor, since it takes from The Turn of the Screw and other stories by James, is a little more difficult to pinpoint as a direct hit, but contains much of the story's essence and provides audiences with a proper Gothic romance and a chilling, character-driven ghost story.
However, it's certainly not as scary as Hill House. There are several reasons for this, the biggest of which is Flanagan's approach to the ghosts in the story, which were more fleshed-out and personal rather than a constantly lingering background presence. Another reason is that, due to it being a love story at its core, the jump scares—which are still present and true to Flanagan's oeuvre—aren't as frequent. There's more opportunity for audiences to get absorbed in the characters and story, which is a double-edged sword. It's so compelling that, at times, Bly Manor doesn't feel like a ghost story or horror TV series at all, and at others, it succeeds in distracting its audiences for that one, blind-siding scare.
To give credit where credit is due, there's more than one big scare in The Haunting of Bly Manor, but all the horror elements and ghosts are secondary to the characters of the piece, which are played out expertly by many familiar faces and returning cast from Hill House, including Victoria Pedretti, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Kate Siegel, and Henry Thomas. The second time around, fans should come for the scares, but stay for the story.