The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) | TV Series Review

In The Fall of the House of Usher, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), owner of the leading pharmaceutical company Fortunato, has invited Assistant U.S. Attorney General, Augusta “Auggie” Dupin (Carl Lumbly), to his tragically demolishing childhood home. Why now, after a several-year court battle between Ushers’ company and the government? Roderick has a confession to make, to 73 charges involving fraud and… the deaths of all of his children.

Each story Roderick tells is triggered by a ghost of his past making an appearance. He takes us back to the beginning of it all, in 1962 when his mother rose from her buried grave seeking revenge on her former boss, Mr. Longfellow. She refused to see any doctors or take any medicine, despite her pain, so they sought support from her former boss of 20 years’ help – Longfellow – who took it all but gave to her nothing. With no support or options, her death became inevitable. Or so they thought.

The Fall of the House of Usher, which is derived from the classic Gothic horror novel by Edgar Allan Poe, has a much darker tone than the original story. Much of the series focuses on the family dynamics and relationships, as well as the turmoil that happens as one event crumbles to the next.

The element of horror and terror throughout the series is still integrated through really clever jump scares and ghosts. These ghosts are tormented souls, the kind that linger in the background and break through barriers when emotionally charged. The ghosts presented have moments that scare you and build tension, but The Fall of the House of Usher doesn’t revolve around the ghosts. They are much more a background character than you would expect if you were only to have watched the first of Mike Flanagan’s shows, The Haunting of Hill House.

The way Flanagan is able to intertwine character development with these relationships, and create modernized stories from these very old stories is captivating. Obviously, Edgar Allan Poe wasn’t writing about a pharmaceutical company and AI back in the day, so Flanagan came up with a lot of this content on is his own. The most ‘Edgar Allan Poe’ influence lies in the clever metaphors, the intimate storytelling, and the tragedy behind what’s at the core of the story.

It’s very original and unique, but Flanagan’s playing on the core of how the novel operates. The original story is very minimal in the scheme of things, so Mike has a lot of freedom to develop what he wants the story to look like. Flanagan has such a brilliant way of merging the physical horror of what we’re seeing and what we’re experiencing with the mental horror that our characters are going through.

Each performance, especially from our veteran cast, is elevated and captures your attention. A “new face” that is a standout is Mary McDonnell as Madeline Usher. She has the look of Moira from Schitt’s Creek, but the vibe of Meryl Streep in Devil Wears Prada. A femme fatale whose strategy always revolves around the best outcome for her and Roderick, and is a more important player to the Fortunado success than you’d expect.

Bruce Greenwood’s Roderick Usher is a very stoic character through most of it, so his emotionally powerful moments while recounting his story took me by surprise. He and Madeline are the primary characters we’re following and they do a great job in building characters that we have very conflicting feelings for.

The magnitude of this family is like the Trump or the Kardashian family; people who have an insurmountable amount of wealth and their name has real power, it carries weight. Are they great people? Probably not. The Usher demise initially feels disconnected because of its mysteriousness, but all the strings start to connect to each other and by the end you think, “oh wow, that all makes sense”.

As a conclusion to Mike Flanagan’s series’ on Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher is his most inventive and original. The tone falls deep into its gothic horror roots but leans further into its capability of mystery and intrigue. It has a beautifully poetic ending, dark and vulgar sequences, and a modern scenario to make a Poe story timely and relevant. The Fall of the House of Usher is Flanagan’s expanded TV version of Knives Out. 

Listen to our full review of The Fall of the House of Usher on this episode of The Hollywood Outsider podcast: