This is an unlikely pick for a television series to watch. We’d watched the very first season of American Horror Story long ago and none of the rest. Our cinephile friend suggested it to us and I can see why he did due its excellent production values and execution. Still I think horror stories work best in shorter formats as they inevitably break down when scrutinized too closely over the course of longer forms of fiction. This show actually makes for an excellent case study of this truth.

In the present day, five siblings get on with their adults lives in different ways after a traumatic experience during their childhoods. Some 25 years ago, their parents bought an old house with the intention of fixing it and then flipping it. To that effect, they moved the whole family into it for the summer. Strange things start happening though each of them sees and hears different things. The eldest son for example doesn’t actually see anything much though he uses the stories of the others as the basis of a successful novel. The youngest daughter, Nell, however regularly sees an apparition that she calls the bent-neck lady. In the end, they fled the house, the mother died, seemingly of suicide and the father left them to be raised by an aunt without much of an explanation. Now strange things are happening again and Nell reports that the bent-neck lady has returned.

This series uses all of the standard horror tropes, floating ghosts, bumps in the night, creepy reflections and so forth and there’s nothing really new either in the way of scares or plot development. What makes it stand out is the high quality of the production and most of it the writing. Interestingly every episode in the whole season is directed by the same person Mike Flanagan who also acts as the overall showrunner, ensuring a consistent tone and look throughout, Yet each episode actually has a different writer who seems to be charged with developing the backstory of each character. This is why the episodes are so interesting even if it means that the stories feel strangely episodic and unrelated. For example, only Nell ever sees the bent-neck lady and none of the other characters really acknowledge Theo’s psychic powers.

Judged individually, many of the episodes are outstanding. Nell’s story is a standard but well executed haunting with a shocking twist as to the identity of the ghost. The writing of Luke’s addiction to drugs as a means to cope with what he has experienced is surprisingly nuanced, showing what it looks like both from the perspective of the addicted and those who are try to help him but are repeatedly disappointed. It’s not all great though. Shirley’s story as an adult is underwhelming and feels like it should belong in a more traditional soap opera. Also the problem of things that happen in individual stories not impacting the overall narrative remains. The first episode shows Steven as a sort of professional skeptic who installs special cameras to look for ghosts. He never does this when it comes to the claims of his own family members or even in response to what he sees himself. Similarly in her own story Theo uses her power to gain information she shouldn’t have access to otherwise, but her power is useless in the group scenes.

I was also shocked that they went into the backstory of the house itself and the owners who first built it. I suppose it doesn’t matter. I’d also consider the finale to be fairly weak. I think I’d prefer a horror series to have an unambiguously darker ending. Still this is probably as good as we can expect. The key is to make viewers care about your characters first and then have bad things happen to them. Due to the inherent constraints of the horror genre however this can’t work for too long. You can only kill each character once after all. It seems that this will indeed get a sequel, perhaps set in other houses, but I don’t expect to watch more of the same.