The Fall of the House of Usher · Season 1 · Netflix
The Fall of the House of Usher Season 1
The Fall of the House of Usher Season 1 is a MUST-WATCH, BollyMeter 8.9/10. 8 episodes on Netflix from 12 October 2023.
Updated
What BollyAI Thinks
The Fall of the House of Usher dropped October 12, 2023 as Mike Flanagan's most ambitious Netflix project. The conceit is structural genius: the Usher family is a pharmaceutical dynasty whose Fortunato drug - clearly modelled on OxyContin - has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. The eight heirs of patriarch Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) die in deaths drawn directly from Poe's stories - Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Pit and the Pendulum - administered by a figure named Verna (Carla Gugino). Critics gave 91 percent from 116 reviews, the largest critical sample of Flanagan's Netflix work. The show works as horror, as satire, and as a Dickensian reckoning with inherited guilt. Mark Hamill as Fortunato's attorney is the supporting-cast standout.
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The Room
“Vintage Poe filtered through Flanagan's dark lens: The Fall of the House of Usher will get a rise out of horror fans.”
Rotten Tomatoes (consensus)
Standout Episodes
The hours worth arguing about - premieres, finales, and the turning points. BollyAI reads the room episode by episode.
- E1A Midnight Dreary8.8
The opener sets up the Usher empire - its pharmaceutical fortune and the Fortunato drug's body count - through the frame of a federal investigator interviewing an elderly Roderick. The time structure and the scope of what Flanagan is attempting become clear: this is not horror for horror's sake.
The moment: The cold open's revelation of the Usher family's end - presented before the cause - sets the show's moral tone precisely.
Full review of E1 →