ED TRIP

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER Mike Flanagan turns everything up to 11 for his crazed Edgar Allan Poe adaptation…

Bruce Greenwood (replacing Frank Langella) heads up the infamous house as Roderick Usher

When it comes to adapting the classics, some filmmakers prefer the softly-softly approach. Not so writer/director Mike Flanagan. Having put his own inimitable spin on Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House), Stephen King (Doctor Sleep) and Henry James (The Haunting of Bly Manor), he’s not afraid to take sacred horror texts and turn them inside out.

All the same, his new Netflix series, The Fall of the House of Usher, an update of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story, will ruffle some raven feathers. ‘It’s the closest I will get to giallo – it’s wild,’ he says. ‘I’ve never gotten to work on anything like it.’

Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) and his twin sister Madeline (Mary McDonnell) run a corrupt company called Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. When Roderick’s six children start getting picked off one by one, the Ushers are forced to reckon with the sins of the past. Exactly what these are remains to be seen, but it’s something to do with the mysterious Verna (Carla Gugino). A conversation between Roderick and dogged investigator Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) – the name of the legendary detective in Poe’s 1841 tale The Murders in the Rue Morgue – provides an elegant framing device, taking us back and forth through two different timelines.

Among a cast of Flanagan familiars are Henry Thomas, T’Nia Miller and Rahul Kohli as the eldest Usher children, plus Kate Siegel (who’s also married to Mike Flanagan) as a scheming PR. Mark Hamill plays the family lawyer. It may sound a little Succession, but each episode is loosely based on a Poe tale, and there are various Poe-related Easter eggs scattered throughout.

‘A blood-soaked, bodies-hit-the-floor, screaming-terror-filled rock show’

KATE SIEGEL

Besides, as the author himself would agree, it’s not the story that matters so much as how you tell it. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher as a series is an absolute romp,’ says Siegel. ‘And when I say romp, I mean like a blood-soaked, bodies-hit-the-floor, screaming-terror-filled rock show.’ Gugino agrees: ‘It’s batshit crazy in the best possible way.’

This particular romp was not without its rocky moments. In April 2022, original star Frank Langella was fired for alleged misconduct on set, with Greenwood drafted in to replace him and reshoots required. ‘The production of Usher was rough, but not the roughest I’ve had,’ says Flanagan, citing The Haunting of Hill House as the hardest.

So how does the series fit into his rapidly expanding Haunting universe? ‘It’s unlike anything I’ve ever done,’ he says. ‘My favourite way to describe it to people is like Hill House is kind of a string quartet, Bly Manor is this delicate, beautiful piece of classical piano music, and The Fall of the House of Usher is heavy metal. It’s rock ’n’ roll.’

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER IS ON NETFLIX FROM 12 OCTOBER.