With Halloween closely approaching, the need for some scary TV shows is increasing. The newest Netflix short series titled “The Fall of the House of Usher” fills that need.
Released on Oct. 12, the show immediately piqued my interest, primarily due to its director, Mike Flanagan. Renowned for his work on another popular Netflix series, “The Haunting of Hill House,” this new series incorporates actors from the former, along with thematic elements synonymous with Flanagan’s style.
The show begins with an attorney, Auguste Dupin, played by Carl Lumbly, going to a dark and musty house. In the house is Roderick, sitting in a chair, telling Dupin he’s about to tell him everything.
The audience is then introduced to the trial taking place against Roderick, with Dupin being the attorney for the government. The trial is against the company Roderick owns, a multi-millionaire pharmaceutical company, Fortunato.
According to Dupin, this company, specifically a drug called Lidodone, has killed hundreds of thousands of people due to its addicting chemistry. Of course, Roderick tells Dupin he must start from the beginning, the very beginning. The first flashback is when Roderick and his twin, Madeline, were children.
Their mother is shown as a very religious woman who had an affair with the head of the Fortunato company, thus resulting in their birth. At wit’s end, their mother dies in their home, and the twins decide to bury their mother, but again, in Flanagan style, their mother quite utterly rises from the grave to kill their father.
Death is everywhere in this series. It becomes apparent in the first episode that all of Rodericks’s children have died in the past two weeks. Every death seemed like an abnormal accident, but Roderick assured Dupin that he had killed his children.
What plays into the factor of everything in this story is how Roderick got to own Fortunato.
This show has twists and turns all throughout it. It never gets boring, and you are constantly questioning everything.
