Culture Diary: The Haunting of Bly Manor
Scary stories are not my favorite. And yet, there’s something about them I love, especially scary stories that involve ghosts. They’re both the scariest and the most compelling to me because they are the most human.
Of course, most scary ghost stories (or at least the best ones) are usually a metaphor for all the ways the living are haunted — either by the dead or by past traumas or mistakes or lost loves. It’s a given — part of living is being revisited by our past, whether we invite it or not.
I watched The Haunting of Hill House and was completely taken by it. I was also completely terrified. I still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night thinking of “Bent Neck Lady” and all she represents.
Like Hill House, which was based on a book by Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Bly Manor is an interpretation, of Henry James’ story “The Turn of the Screw.” Many of the same actors who were in Hill House reappear in Bly Manor. Both stories are centered around the universe of a large, foreboding mansion. But that’s where the similarities end.
For me, Bly Manor fell flat in the places that resonated in Hill House. For one, it wasn’t nearly as scary. Honestly, that was a bonus for me, since I’m not sure my fragile emotional state as of late could have handled another “Bent Neck Lady” situation. But also…
