TV

The Fall of the House of Usher

Just how well do you know Edgar Allan Poe, anyway?

Photo: /EIKE SCHROTER/NETFLIX

The Fall of the House of Usher doesn’t waste any time before playing Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest hits. In the first 30 seconds of the series premiere, I counted at least four references to four separate works, some more obscure than others. (No points for noticing the raven, but you admire the audacity of that “Another Brick in the Wall” needle drop, which is destined to send a shiver up the spine of anyone who knows “The Cask of Amontillado.”)

Flanagan is an old hand at doing this kind of thing. His The Haunting of Hill House modernized a beloved horror-lit classic; his The Haunting of Bly Manor, nominally an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, wove in a few other James stories as well. One episode in, The Fall of the House of Usher feels like a little of both: a series that uses Poe’s classic short story as a jumping-off point for a ripped-from-the-headlines interrogation of Big Pharma greed and its consequences with memorable bits from a bunch of other Poe stories stirred into the mix.

To any viewer weaned on a steady diet of Poe’s tales of mystery and imagination, this opening montage is both a statement of purpose and a challenge as real as spotting the ghosts that popped up in the backgrounds of series creator Mike Flanagan’s previous Netflix shows: Just how well do you know Edgar Allan Poe, anyway? — Scott Meslow, “The Fall of the House of Usher Series-Premiere Recap: Keeping Up With the Ushers”

  1. Episode 8 The Raven
    The Fall of the House of Usher Series-Finale Recap: That’s So Verna We finally get the gory details of Roderick’s devil’s bargain.
  2. Episode 7 The Pit and the Pendulum
    The Fall of the House of Usher Recap: Half the Man I Used to Be Freddie fulfills his destiny: being the most cowardly Usher and having the nastiest death.
  3. Episode 6 Goldbug
    The Fall of the House of Usher Recap: The Mirror Has Two Faces House of Usher is dialing its eat-the-rich ethos all the way up.
  4. Episode 5 The Tell-Tale Heart
    The Fall of the House of Usher Recap: My Heart Will Go On Even Roderick can’t deny what’s going on at this point.
  5. Episode 4 The Black Cat
    The Fall of the House of Usher Recap: That Darn Cat! Verna is racking up her body count, but what exactly is she up to?
  6. Episode 3 Murder in the Rue Morgue
    The Fall of the House of Usher Recap: Monkey’s Paw Verna is embedding herself with the Usher children and (presumably) setting them up for future downfalls.
  7. Episode 2 The Masque of the Red Death
    The Fall of the House of Usher Recap: Set Fire to the Rain Ain’t no party like a doomed sex party because a doomed sex party don’t stop. (Until everyone is dead.)
  8. Episode 1 A Midnight Dreary
    The Fall of the House of Usher Series-Premiere Recap: Keeping Up With the Ushers In his latest reimagining of a horror classic for Netflix, Mike Flanagan wastes no time playing Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest hits.

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