Brandon’s Review of “The Haunting of Bly Manor”
Streaming now on Netflix
Welp, that’s 9 hours of my life I WON’T be getting back! What a disappointment! I really enjoyed the first “season” of this anthological-style horror series on Netflix. To label the Haunting of Bly Manor a horror is a blatant lie and someone should sue someone because I’m sort of upset!
The Haunting of Bly Manor is an American supernatural horror drama television series, created by Mike Flanagan for Netflix, and loosely based on Henry James‘s work, particularly his 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. It is the follow-up series to The Haunting of Hill House and the second entry in The Haunting anthology series. The creative team and much of the cast of Hill House returned for Bly Manor, but the two series’ narratives are not connected.
Quick hits on why I didn’t like this show because I need to start making up for lost time in my life.
- It watches like a book. Long scenes filled with redundant dialogue that the “moving pictures” were supposed to solve in story telling. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a good dialogue driven film. Heck, I even enjoy the theater. This though? No. Just garbage talk. Word vomit in proper English accents doesn’t make your long drawn out pointless conversations any better.
- The cinematography is too dark, making it difficult to watch while straining your eyes. Even brightening up the settings on the TV didn’t help.
- There’s a “lady in the lake” that doesn’t get nearly enough of the spotlight, and was the only “scary” part of this show.
- The kids were annoying.
- The ending sucked, and was drawn out WAYYYYY too long. You could have ended the show after the first 20 minutes of the last episode. The remaining 40 minutes felt like 2 hours and didn’t need to be filmed, produced, edited, released, etc.
- I’m annoyed that this show put me in such a sour mood. Honestly, there were some decent parts to this show, but the wait had no reward to it.
Don’t waste your time… I should have watched The Trial of the Chicago 7.
