Roush Review: ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ Transforms Poe Into a Corporate Immorality Tale of Karmic Justice

The Fall of the House of Usher

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Never say “nevermore” when it comes to the enduringly macabre appeal of Edgar Allan Poe, the latest inspiration for Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor) to weave contemporary horrors from iconic literary texts. Black cat? Tell-tale heart? Pit and the pendulum? All accounted for, and more, in Netflix‘s The Fall of the House of Usher, whose myriad references to Poe’s fever dreams range from clever to obvious.

Far from the Gothic world of the original 1839 short story, the modern House of Usher is a corporate immorality tale — part Dopesick, part Succession — that presents the Ushers as a venal pharmaceutical dynasty dealt a bloody hand of karmic justice by a mischievous shape-shifting vixen (the perfectly cast Carla Gugino). “I love how deliciously, pointlessly mean you lot can be,” she observes before lowering the boom on one of her prey.

While Poe acolytes can entertain themselves by keeping a tally of all the callouts to the master’s oeuvre — including Mark Hamill‘s gruff character of lethal family fixer Arthur Pym — the eight-part series becomes a creepy if laboriously predicable death march as one by one, episode by episode, the legitimate and bastard heirs of Roderick Usher (a mournful Bruce Greenwood) — most played by members of Flanagan’s growing repertory company — succumb to inventively gruesome fates. This isn’t a spoiler, because we know from the start that the Ushers are goners. Which tends to reduce the suspense to an Omen-like how-will-they-top-that sort of sadistic voyeurism.

Each Usher is vividly played — especially Kate Siegel as a ruthless PR whiz, Henry Thomas as the feckless and insecure eldest (with a truly unforgivable man-bun), and most notably, Mary McDonnell as Roderick’s ice-cold sister Madeline — but these cruel, greedy vultures can’t die fast enough. You might find yourself siding with detective C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), to whom Roderick is spilling his long and tortured confession, when he gripes, “I’m wondering why you’re dragging this out.”

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Still, with bodies in the wall and in the basement, with ticking heart sounds and a fiendishly resilient black cat conjuring Poe’s most lasting inventions, Flanagan followers will likely be hooked to the last scream, even if the overall effect is less haunting than Poe’s poetry, often directly quoted. Some things, thankfully, resist updating.

The Fall of the House of Usher, Series Premiere, Thursday, October 12, Netflix