“The Haunting of Hill House” is an eerie and moving mystery of a mini-series.
Again, Netflix creates a watercooler show, one that dominated most of the Halloween conversation in 2018. This adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s titular 1959 gothic horror novel is perhaps the most compelling one yet. Mike Flanagan’s superb expanding of the story combines potent scares with a “This Is Us” modernity. Eschewing jump scares and cheap violence in favor of character development and surprising twists, all 10 hours of this fare were frightening and affecting. The never-better Carla Gugino headed the superb cast of actors playing a family as haunted by their individual choices as they are by the cursed house they lived in.