Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Fall Of The House Of Usher’ On Netflix, Mike Flanagan’s Horrorfest Based On Works By Edgar Allan Poe

Mike Flanagan has been one of Netflix’s most dependable showrunners, expertly crafting one horror series after another since The Haunting Of Hill House in 2018. His newest series uses the stories of Edgar Allan Poe to build a tale of a family who built a pharmaceutical powerhouse under somewhat sketchy circumstances, and a patriarch who sees all of his children die in the span of two weeks.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We see some flashes. A “Happy New Year 1980” sign. A woman’s face. A wall. Then we’re in the inside of a church, where there’s a funeral in progress for three people.

The Gist: Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), who, along with his sister Madeline (Mary McDonnell) runs the very powerful Usher family, is mourning the three children that are being buried that day, not long after his other three adult children also suffered untimely deaths. He looks up into a balcony and sees a woman’s shadow. “She’s here,” he tells his granddaughter Lenore (Kyliegh Curran).

In his office, U.S. Attorney C. Augustine Dupin is looking at a board with news of all the deaths of Roderick’s children, and he gets word that Roderick Usher wants to talk to him. It’s a request direct from Roderick, not even going through family attorney Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill), whom everyone calls “The Pym Reaper.”

When Dupin gets to Roderick’s house, the same one he grew up in, the senior Usher tells him that he’s ready to admit to all of it. He means the fraud and other charges that Dupin has brought against him and his company, Fortunado Pharmaceuticals. But he also wants to tell him about who killed all six of his children over the past two weeks. He had his six children — Frederick (Henry Thomas), Camille (Kate Siegel), Napoleon aka “Leo” (Rahul Kohli), Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan), Victorine (T’Nia Miller) and Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota) with five different women. But because of the way he was brought up, in a family of exclusion, they’re all welcome, if they keep the family’s secrets in the family.

One secret has to do with his mother Eliza (Annabeth Gish), who worked for Fortunado’s former CEO William Longfellow (Robert Longstreet), and the circumstances surrounding not only her death but Longfellow’s, which allowed the Usher siblings to take over the company and grow it exponentially over 60 years.

Two weeks earlier, during the fraud trial for Fortunado, Dupin says in his opening statement that a member of the family will testify for the government, but is staying anonymous in fear for their lives. Roderick and Madeline call for a family dinner, which includes spouses. There, they have Pym pass around a more robust NDA than is already in place; Madeline tells the gathering that whoever is found to be the informant will be “Neutralized. Like dead.” Roderick offers $50 million, no strings, no taxes, to whoever outs the informant.

As we get back to Roderick’s talk with Dupin, he tells the prosecutor about a woman named Verna (Carla Gugino). He and Madeline (Zach Gilford, Willa Fitzgerald) met her on New Years’ Eve 1979; she was tending bar as they waited out the New Year after bolting a costume party. Actually, they may have been doing something a bit more involved than that, as Madeline tells her brother that they want to make sure the cops don’t follow them. According to Roderick, Verna is responsible for the deaths of all his children.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Fall Of The House Of Usher certainly has the similar dark, foreboding feel of Mike Flanagan’s other Netflix series, like The Haunting Of Hill House and The Haunting Of Bly Manor. The three shows even share a lot of the same cast members.

Our Take: While The Fall Of The House Of Usher is named after one of Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous short stories, Flanagan bases the series on a number of Poe works, and makes overt references to Poe throughout the series. In the first episode alone, there’s snippets of Poe’s distinctive verse, raven sightings and more.

What he manages to do is weave Poe’s brand of foreboding horror into a modern story with a sprawling cast and keep it all engaging. Using the device of Broderick admitting all to Dupin as the way into this complex story actually works in this case, because it allows Flanagan to go back and forth in time in order to build the story. We’ve already established that the six Usher scions have all been killed in the span of two weeks; now we can see just how Broderick and Madeline built Fortunado into the power it became, starting with that New Year’s Eve encounter with Verna. And we can see just what kind of rivalries built in the family that fostered the idea of one of them turning on them and working with the government.

We don’t get an even picture of all the Usher kids in the first episode, but we get enough to satisfy our curiosity. Camille is a publicity shark; Frederick is a bit of a doof whom the rest of the family calls “Frauderick”; Tamerlane is very loyal and hates Roderick’s current wife Juno (Ruth Codd). Leo likes getting blow jobs by groupies even though he’s in a relationship. We also find out a little bit about Prospero and Victorine, but not as much. Even so, we know that they all have their own issues despite what looks like unwavering family loyalty. One of them isn’t so loyal, though, and it’ll be interesting to find out who that is. It’s like Succession mixed with a season of American Horror Story.

Flanagan’s ability to weave this story is helped by the fact that he has regulars like Greenwood, Gugino, Thomas and others in prominent roles, and pros like McDonnell and Lumbly joining his family of players. They know what’s required in a show like this and they make the most of what Flanagan gives them.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After seeing something in the limo outside the second funeral, Roderick collapses. As Madeline sends Pym to get very specific help, Roderick mutters, “It’s time” while seeing a raven perching on a fence.

Sleeper Star: McDonnell is creepy AF as Madeline, who seems to be much more vindictive and vicious than her brother Roderick.

Most Pilot-y Line: Frederick’s wife Morelle (Crystal Balint) bakes a cake that looks just like a law book and presents it at the dinner. Then she put out a to-go coffee cup; Leo leans over and deadpans, “I bet it’s a cake.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. If anyone can continue the deft storytelling that was established in the first episode of The Fall Of The House Of Usher, despite the massive cast, it’s Mike Flanagan.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.