I’m a bit ashamed to admit that despite garnering (read: somehow bluffing my way into) a reputation among my friends as being ‘cultured’ and ‘well read’, my exposure to Edgar Allan Poe’s works has only come through secondary sources. In fact, I’m pretty sure it only goes as far as The Simpsons’ ‘Treehouse of Horror’ episodes. I don’t really have a special interest in Gothic horror, but ya know, it can be alright. And while I might love The Cure, I’m absolutely not what you would even call ‘goth-adjacent’ (honestly the makeup routine seems like hard enough work in itself). 

Nonetheless, thanks to the wonders of modern TV production, I didn’t need to have any of the above qualifications to enjoy The Fall of the House of Usher, the latest in Mike Flanagan’s ever-increasing portfolio of supernatural horror literature given the screen treatment. Flanagan’s latest might take its name from one of Poe’s many short stories, but while it uses that tale as its backbone, it’s actually more of a mash-up of a number of his works stitched together to form a cohesive narrative. And if you happened to be in the mood for a narrative that focused on a powerful family, their wealth amassed through the peddling of questionable prescription drugs, who are now ordained to suffer terrible fates of a paranormal, murderous nature, then this is the show for you. Not to mention the timeliness and associated social commentaries that come along for the ride. What’s that rapping at my chamber door? The opioid crisis?

Pressing current affairs notwithstanding, this re-telling of the House of Usher is about as contemporary as you can get. It also has one heck of an ensemble cast, with numerous names from Flanagan’s previous productions (Gugino, Kate Siegel, Henry Thomas, T’Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli) returning alongside other names of renown (Mark Hamill, Mary McDonnell) making their first appearance in his projects. The core of it is told via a continuing conversation between Roderick Usher (Greenwood), who with his empire crumbling around him and drug lawsuit lawyers at the gates, invites Dupin (Lumbly) to hear his final confession. Roderick re-tells the key events of his life that led to his rise to the top of Fortunato (alongside his sister and company COO Madeleine, played in present by McDonnell and in 1970s flashbacks by Willa Fitzgerald), as well as the truth behind the recent murders of each of his children - each of whom take part in their own cautionary tales given their own respective episodes. Far from taking a position of entrenchment and bitterness though, Roderick is ready to give his entire legacy up, and as he continues further into his confessions - all the outlandish, horrifying details of them - even Dupin has to put his own bewilderment aside to confront the incomprehensible truth behind it all.

While the conversations between Roderick and Dupin serve as the foundation of each episode, House of Usher tends to ebb and flow in its focus, using its early episodes to put a lens on each of the different members of the Usher family. Each of Roderick’s children has their own diverse part to play and a seat at the family table, and each in turn represents their own allegory for the various aspects - and pitfalls - of life as one of the elite. There is the unbridled hedonism of aspiring socialite and youngest son Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota), video game publishing magnate Napoleon (Kohli), viper-tongued PR guru Camille (Siegel) and visionary heart surgeon Victorine (Miller). Then there are the eldest two of the six, for whom things don’t get much better. As the oldest daughter, Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan) appears to be in the midst of her own dissociation from reality as well as the launch of her own lifestyle startup, and Frederick (Thomas), the assumed heir of the Fortunato empire after Roderick, hides his own psychotic jealousy and possessiveness over his wife Morella (Crystal Balint) and daughter Lenore (Kyleigh Curran) by outwardly projecting an opulent yet wholesome family life and a curious obsession with bowling. Each of these sons and daughters have their own deep-rooted issues to unravel and their own horrible deaths waiting for them. And you can guarantee that given this is a Flanagan production, each one will provide imagery capable of leaving a lasting (and unquestionably haunting) impression.

Whether it functions as a horror piece or as a takedown of the ludicrously rich, House of Usher is gripping stuff in the outset. It owes this to a script abundant with memorable dialogue and an intention to show strange and disturbing happenings first and (eventually) explain them later - a technique well used by Flanagan in his Haunting series of shows. Just like those, this show spends a lot of its time wallowing in a funeral march of tension and dark intrigue worthy of Poe’s stories - an atmosphere that is largely driven by the ongoing scenes between Roderick and Dupin - their ongoing conversation being the guide to the story’s eventual, earth-shattering conclusion. 

For this show to work, the respective chemistry between both Bruce Greenwood and Carl Lumbly needed to be good, and it absolutely is. Greenwood plays Roderick as a convincingly conflicted figure, the cracks slowly appearing in his facade of calm, all-powerful assurance as the weight of his children’s demise and his own past begin to cascade down on him. On the other side, Lumbly’s Dupin has long been a nemesis of the Ushers (played in his younger years by Malcolm Goodwin), having tracked them over the years for various questionable acts surrounding Fortunato drug trials but never able to land the killer blow. He’s been waiting for this moment a long time, and it clearly shows in the pair’s early dialogue, before Dupin’s own expectations of an overdue and easy confession are subverted much like the viewer’s.

It’s also not just Greenwood and Lumbly who steal the show either - the quality of performances across the board are consistently high, and consistently captivating. None of the Ushers are ‘good’ people, their lives as entitled millionaires and their own competitive family dynamic making sure of that (a la Succession). Nonetheless, a few of them are great to watch. Praise must go to both actresses behind Madeline Usher, the sister of Roderick, acting COO of Fortunato and the ‘Lady Macbeth’ of the piece. Willa Fitzgerald plays the younger, aspirational Madeline with cold, conniving calculation, planting the seeds of ambition in a younger Roderick’s (played by Zach Gilford) mind and setting the wheels in motion for the Usher legacy. In the current day, Mary McDonnell plays Madeleine as the exact result of those early machinations - ruthless, iron-fisted and every bit the real power in the Usher household with her continued role as Roderick’s chief advisor. The script repeatedly gives her some fantastic dialogue to dish out, especially towards the end when Death’s own hand is hovering above her and her brother, with one acidically disdainful monologue targeting the poor and their need for the rich in their lives being a particular highlight. 

It’s a trait also shared by Kate Siegel’s Camille, who’s also pretty adept at unleashing caustic verbal abuse when she feels the need to (which is often, and normally in the name of mistreating her hapless PR assistants). Also, as Arthur Pym, the official lawyer (and unofficial “fixer”) of the Usher family, Mark Hamill gets to enjoy a character whose own shadowy past, distinctive voice and complete comfort with the dirty work of hiding a family’s criminal activity enables him to put his full acting ability on show. Last of the mentions - but by no means least - goes to Carla Gugino, who returns in a role not too far removed from her time in The Haunting of Hill House, if only as the central figure upon which so much of House of Usher’s malevolent mystique resides. As the singularly named Verna, a barmaid who innocuously inserts herself into the lives of Roderick and Madeleine Usher as they celebrate New Year 1980 at a downtown drinking establishment, all paths to the answers of the questions asked by both Dupin and the viewer ultimately lead to her. It’s tough to give too much more away without spoiling the entire occult premise of the plot, but as the vengeful force responsible for the family’s rise as well as the impending fall of the title, she is both the broker of their fortunes and power, and their eventual judge. In short, she’s the one character who when she appears on the screen, you know things are about to take a turn for the worse - and Gugino does a great job in granting her such an other-worldly presence.

Still, while the acting is top notch and the dialogue is repeatedly engaging, fans of Poe’s work may find all the referencing to it a bit too on the nose. If the character names weren’t enough of an indication (nor the fact that the name ‘’Verna’ is an anagram of ‘raven’ - shock horror), there’s an awful lot of effort made to shoe-horn a lot of the elements from his stories into a modern-day tale of a dysfunctional family with impossible wealth. Frankly, not all of it works. Some, like the symbolic spinning of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ into a tale about the potential horrors of new medical technology (namely pacemakers) are cleverly done. But others, including one Usher family member being murdered by a vengeful black cat come off as daft. With the show going as far as naming the early figurehead of Fortunato - and Roderick and Madeleine’s target to oust on the way to the top - as Rufus Griswold (a one-time literary rival of Poe’s, his namesake played by Michael Trucco), it even feels like satire for satire’s sake. For sure, it’s all done from a place of love for the stories, but it is certainly misplaced on more than one occasion. While it’s possible to enjoy both the harrowing atmosphere of House of Usher or its moments of dark comedy (another Flanagan characteristic), when it tries to throw these at you at the same time as well as retain tribute to the writer that has inspired it, you can’t help but feel a bit bemused by the proceedings.

Another issue lies within House of Usher’s ability to remain genuinely scary for its eight-episode run. The first couple of episodes certainly give a jolt with its jumpscares, but it becomes apparent, perhaps due to a common pattern of flow that each episode takes on, that you know when they’re going to come. Certainly, they’re still very disturbing from a visual perspective (especially when it comes to Prospero’s night club-themed demise), but the visceral shock of them fades as the nature of them begins to repeat. It also doesn’t help that when it is the turn of each Usher family member to cop it (usually through some means of karmic justice for their hurtful vices), you’re not really invested in them enough to truly care about it. Part of this is because some of them - namely Leo and Tamerlane - aren’t really interesting enough as characters. Others, such as Prospero, Frederick or Camille, are simply because they are such assholes, and ‘asshole fatigue’ is definitely a thing I’m beginning to feel when watching a lot of American TV shows. That’s not to say the show isn’t without its sympathetic characters - you can feel for Juno (Ruth Codd), Roderick’s most recent wife and former drug addict trying to navigate the abuse of her in-laws and her own increasing dependency on Ligodone, and especially Lenore, who fights for her mother when her father Frederick’s own evil comes to the fore. But on the most part, you spend this show watching bad yet paper-thin characters get their just desserts, and I’m not sure simple schadenfreude is enough for a horror series - at least one as stylish and well-acted as this - is enough to carry it to a place among the true classics of the genre.

All the same, there’s still a lot of macabre fun to be had in watching The Fall of the House of Usher, at least from the grisly spectacle of the very fall itself. It’s also proof that Mike Flanagan still very much has the creative touch for atmospheric supernatural horrors, and that anything with his name behind it is going to be a worthwhile spine-chiller no matter how heavily it leans into contemporary or classic literature. On said literature, it’s also had an effect on my Amazon cart as well. Edgar Allan Poe: The Ultimate Collection should be with me in a couple of days. And while I’d love to say “nevermore” to the possibility of TV shows influencing my reading habits, that definitely ain’t going to change any time soon.