Netflix's 'The Fall Of The House Of Usher' Might Be TV's Next Great Horror-Mystery: REVIEW

PublishedOctober 16, 2023 11:57 AM EDT|UpdatedOctober 16, 2023 11:57 AM EDT

"The Fall of the House of Usher" has serious potential.

The latest Mike Flanagan project for Netflix has had a staggering amount of hype surrounding it ever since the trailer dropped.

He's the genius behind "The Haunting of Hill House," "The Haunting of Bly Manor" and the absolutely outstanding "Midnight Mass."

Very few people in Hollywood are capable of creating incredibly complex and intriguing horror stories like Flanagan. He's in a league of his own. That's why people couldn't wait to see "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Well, I'm glad to report that it doesn't disappoint.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is outstanding.

I finally finished the premiere episode of the Netflix series, and I walked away incredibly impressed. The storyline is based on a short story from Edgar Allen Poe of the same name.

I never read Poe's story and entered it completely blind. On the surface, the plot isn't overly complicated. Pharmaceutical mogul Roderick Usher (played by the criminally underrated Bruce Greenwood) faces a criminal prosecution and is surrounded by idiotic heirs to the empire.

Roderick faces a huge problem when it's revealed a member of the family is informing to the feds. There's a rat and it's time to hunt. His solution? A $50 million bounty to whoever discovers the informant.

It's quickly revealed this bounty scene is the final time Roderick sees all his children alive. This isn't much of a spoiler as it's made clear from the jump all the kids die.

So, who killed everyone? How'd they all die? Roderick believes he's responsible, but in what sense?

The unknown is what's intriguing.

That leads us to the paranormal aspect of Flanagan's latest work. There's a female character Verna (Carla Gugino) whose role appears to be tied to Roderick's past. In what way? Remains unclear, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that she's almost certainly responsible for the death the viewer knows is coming.

We meet her as a bartender serving a young Roderick and his twin sister Madeline in 1979. It's clear the two have done something bad and are worried about the police coming. Being at the bar is to establish an alibi from whatever happened at their family's pharmaceutical company.

Between flashbacks of Roderick talking to a prosecutor and being in the bar in 1979 with Verna, it's clear she's connected to the deaths in the present time.

Much like "Midnight Mass," everything seems simple on the surface, but once the layers get peeled back, it's clear that nothing is what it appears. There's a truly troubling scene at the end of the premiere where Roderick believes he's seeing all his dead kids in a church. It's obvious they died violent deaths.

In the closing moments of the premiere, Roderick sees a jester/clown in his car and collapses with a nosebleed as he sees a raven. This is key. The raven is in the same location as the conversation with the prosecutor and it was also in the bar in 1979. Whenever it's seen, something bad happens.

Overall, "The Fall of the House of Usher" is off to an incredible start. It's 100% a must-watch if you enjoy a great mystery-horror or love anything else Flanagan has ever done. I rarely say a show is elite after one episode, but it certainly feels like that's the case with Netflix's latest major series.