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The year is 1987, and a young American woman named Dani (Victoria Pedretti) takes a job at as an au pair in the English countryside, looking after Flora (Amelie Bea Smith) and Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) Wingrave, two young children who have lost their parents. It is all perfectly splendid. At …
The most explicit connection between The Haunting Of Bly Manor and its predecessor The Haunting Of Hill House is found in the visual landscape of both. In Haunting Of Hill House, ghosts and monsters lurk in the backgrounds. Bly Manor continues that tradition, and the careful details put into the set …
“The Two Faces, Part One” opens with a great sonic transition from classic frenetic horror strings into “Tainted Love.” The production details that flesh out this story—set pieces, props, music cues, etc.—work together well to construct a layered, unsettling, surprising world. The music transition …
I wish this were a more obvious statement, but good queer representation does not mean queer characters have to be good people. When queer critics talk about good queer representation, we’re talking about nuanced, complex writing that doesn’t reiterate tropes designed and perpetuated by the …
“The Altar Of The Dead” is a remarkable chapter of The Haunting Of Bly Manor. At the heart of it rests a perfectly terrifying premise: What if you’re dead but you don’t know it? That’s the dizzying predicament Hannah Grose finds herself in throughout the episode. Since the very first episode, there …
Henry Wingrave has mostly been a background character up until this point. He hires Dani in the first episode, and it’s evident right away that something is off with him given his refusal to spend time at Bly despite being the children’s sole living family, but to be fair, I wouldn’t want to spend …
We have very little control over our memories. Remembering an event, a person, a place doesn’t always feel like a revisitation. It can feel like an uninvited guest. The Haunting Of Bly Manor hinges on the chaos and disturbance of uninvited memory in “The Two Faces, Part Two,” a sequel to the series’ …
One of the many tricky bits of constructing effective horror is determining how much to explain. Things go bump in the night, but why? Who are they? What happened? An origin story provides context, and context can deepen the horror experience, layering in more emotions than just fear, providing …
“You said it was a ghost story. It isn’t. It’s a love story.” So says the bride to our tale’s narrator when she finally comes to the story’s end. The narrator, we finally learn, is Jamie. Her monologue for the wedding party has been a long and detailed account of her life with Dani, which begins and …
