The Haunting of Hill House is Unparalleled

Man, fuck American Horror Story--The Haunting of Hill House is where it's at.

I truly have not seen a better-written series in quite some time.

A loose adaptation of the book, the Haunting of Hill House is both anachronic and episodic. After the introductory episode, each episode focuses on a different character and their life as a child in Hill House versus their dysfunctional adult life after it. Most of the characters have associated apparitions; ghosts which appear to haunt them specifically. All of the characters, the members of the Crain family, have their vices and the show does a wonderful job of exploring their lives, and how the House comes to ruin them and feed off of them:

• Olivia is the Crain matriarch and the House's first victim; her sanity slowly slips at the machinations of the main villainous ghost within the house until she tries to kill her children and then herself. Her associated ghost is Poppy Hill, the wife of William Hill for who the house is named.
• Hugh is the Crain patriarch and the one who resists the House the most. His dedication to protecting his children and shielding them from the truth comes back to bite him as it makes them easier for the House to manipulate. His associated Ghost is Olivia, albeit until the final few episodes, she's a hallucination he created to deal with her death.
• Steve is the oldest of the Crain children. He's an ass. Despite seeing the ghosts as a child, he refuses to believe in them as an adult, convincing himself that everyone has some mental illness that deludes them and lecturing them on what's wrong with them and what they've done wrong, all while selling a book he wrote capitalizing on their suffering. He is the only one without an associated ghost.
• Shirley is the second-oldest child; headstrong and stubborn, she is nonetheless compassionate about doing the right thing and successfully calls out her siblings on their asshat actions. She at first seems to have no associated ghost, until it's revealed that a man lifting a drink at her every so often is actually an apparition of a married man she cheated on her husband with.
• Theo is the second-youngest child; she is sarcastic and doesn't get along well with others. Rather than an associated ghost, she has a power: a tactile empathic ability to sense occurrences, emotions, and truths regarding what her hands make contact with, inherited from Olivia. This ability makes her asocial and abrasive, and she wears gloves to avoid triggering her ability.
• Luke is the youngest along with Nell, being her twin. Luke is a good person who suffers from a drug addiction and, from youth to adulthood, shares a psychic connection with his twin sister. He has two associated ghosts--Abigail, his "imaginary friend" (who isn't really a ghost at all, at least while he knew her) and William Hill, a disturbing Babadook-esque apparition that employs silence and long takes over jump scares.
• Eleanor, aka Nell, is the youngest along with Luke. A very kind-hearted person who has difficulty standing up for herself, she is the most broken by the Hill House and seems to be its favorite target. She is stalked by her associated ghost, the Bent-Neck Lady, who turns out to be the House's way of tormenting her with its intended method of killing her via hanging--which it eventually succeeds in.

The show's use of Chekhov's Gun is admirable. Every single little thing is important, and gets brought into a new light later. Even tiny little details you would've never bothered to remember turn out to have been incredibly important all along. It really gives you reasons to pay attention, and it was shocking to realize just how much thought went into this series. Rowling would be proud.

And as for the way it ends, it ends happily and it ends perfectly. Every loose end is tied up, none left dangling, and the characters who have survived have gone on to heal. And I truly feel sorry for the horror fans I've heard of that didn't like that ending because it "didn't fit the tone", because I strongly suspect they just don't recognize happy endings in horror anymore--the culture of today demands pointless suffering and angst, so if they don't see that, they don't view it as good.

Having looked through the cast and production, I'm pleasantly surprised, although not entirely so, to find that this is another Mike Flanagan production. He produced Oculus and Hush, which along with Hill House are the only horror entries I really felt were flawlessly executed. Looks like I've found a director I can trust.