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I had watched the haunting of bly manor during Christmas, and I just finished watching the haunting of hill house.
I feel like I finally understand a lot more things about bly manor, now that I've watched hill house. I don't remember it very well, but bly was from early on very chaotic in terms of presentation and linear time, but hill house eases you into it a lot more.
At the same time, I think that bly made me a lot more emotional than hill house. I guess it's because it had a clearer protagonist, meanwhile hill house felt somewhat equally spread out across all the siblings.
If you like horror, I definitely recommend both series! They're very creepy, they have some jumpscares unfortunately, but they don't only rely on them, and they're going to make you cry at the end.
For me they're in the same category as the movie the others, which is also about a fucked up family in a spooky house.
Apparently the director of bly & hill house has made two more series, so I might have to give those a try. I hope they're on Netflix!
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sky
i feel like hill house and bly were two very similar shows in premise with two differing purposes. they both are centered around a family being haunted within (or by) a house, but the perspectives are just completely different. in my opinion, hill house delved much deeper than bly into horror (and drama) by exploring familial trauma; it's clearly a better show in that regard. but i loved bly because it was much more unapologetically poetic / artsy. it used the house and the events that happened within as allegory for dani's struggle with her mental health. sometimes it got kind of convoluted and if you weren't paying attention, you might ask yourself "wtf is going on??" (i def did in the episode where hannah is sort of reliving her memories over and over again.)
but ya anyway!! both r amazing shows lol
I completely agree with you!
Hill house definitely leaned into the horror more, and it helped a lot that it centered around one family, so all the main characters had history together. It felt more cohesive/tight knit as a story in that regard.
One thing that probably helps to keep the horror is the fact that the OG ghosts of the house were evil and remained evil till the end, but I personally didn't like how one-dimensional they were because the only explanation for their evilness was that they were clinically insane :/
Bly manor in comparison makes the OG ghost sympathetic at the end. The more evil presense was that asshole guy that was possessing the young boy half the time but, since he didn't have a creepy ghost form, it was easy to forget he was even a ghost sometimes.
Tbvh, since bly focused so much on the ghosts, it almost felt like a time travelling story instead of a ghost one. And it also kinda threw you into the ghost reality with no explanation, which was a bit frustrating. But it fills in the gaps more in terms of what the ghosts in hill house also experienced!
I wish it could have worked more like it did in hill house with the "time travelling" being the ghost haunting their themselves when they were alive, like we saw in episode 5 of hill house with the reveal of the bent-neck lady. That was such an unsettling and shocking moment! I loved it! (actually, I can't remember if there were similar moments in bly manor too, but I definitely don't remember anything like it)
I was very unlucky with episode 5 of bly manor because I watched it on a plane half asleep, so it made a confusing episode even less comprehensible XD
by lucita; ; Report