REVIEW: The Fall of the House of Usher (2023)

Television Reviews

For the most part, I don’t like horror movies. I never have, aside from old monster movies. I try to be open-minded, but horror and romance films rarely connect with me. I’ve frequently cited Jordan Peele’s recent batch of movies as a counterexample, with good writing and interesting characters overcoming what I see as cheap scares and plot contrivances. For me, a big part of the problem is that movies don’t scare me. For whatever reason, that facet of filmmaking doesn’t work on me, so if I don’t like the characters, the story is DOA. Anyway, this past year, I’ve discovered that I also love Mike Flanagan’s work. I’m more than a little late to this party, but I’m happy to be here. I have an article about all of his Netflix series coming for Halloween, but for now, I’d like to talk about his latest show for the platform, The Fall of the House of Usher. This is the first one I’ve watched brand new and with no fear of spoilers, which is pretty exciting. 

The Fall of the House of Usher is less an adaptation of its namesake and more like the MCU equivalent of Edgar Allen Poe characters and storylines. Roderick and Madeleine Usher are two wealthy siblings in a crumbling empire, and this is the extent of what the show borrows from the original short story. This doesn’t bother me, and I’m not complaining, but if you watch the show, it’s best to adjust your expectations accordingly. Names of characters and companies and lines of dialogue are lifted straight from Poe’s works. The Fall of the House of Usher (which I’ll henceforth be calling House of Usher) is a modern cautionary tale that follows the all-powerful Usher family, wealthy heads of the Fortunato Pharmaceutical empire. What ensues is a bloody cross between Succession and Dopesick. Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) sits down with his former friend and longtime rival Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) to tell him how his six children died, confess to crimes he’s committed over the years, and reveal what set the family on this dark path. Through flashbacks and hallucinations, the audience is granted a front-row seat to decades of corruption, lasciviousness, and possibly murder. 

***SPOILERS***

Kate Siegel talks about her character Camille L'Espanaye in THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. pic.twitter.com/tbY9Au6Gix

— Mike Flanagan Source (@flanagansource) October 22, 2023

While much of the show’s events serve as a reckoning for Roderick and Madeleine’s (Mary McDonnell) misdeeds, it must be said that Roderick’s kids are seriously messed up. Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan), who mercifully goes by Tammy, is an emotionally restricted, verbally abusive curmudgeon who decompresses by ordering her poor husband to have sex with strange women and watching. Prospero, or Perry (Sauriyan Sapkota), engages in orgies with the rich and famous, curating portfolios to blackmail them later. Camille (Kate Siegel), Flanagan’s wife, forces her underlings to commit crimes and to sleep with her. Napoleon (Rahul Kohli) regularly cheats on his boyfriend with fans, and worse still, he blacks out and gets violent. Frederick (Henry Thomas) seems harmless, if a little dumb, but he has cruelty bubbling beneath his surface. Victorine (T’Nia Miller) similarly has a well-constructed, mild-mannered shell hiding mistreatment of animals and a lack of professional ethics. When each Usher heir is bumped off, you can’t help thinking, “You know, he/she deserved that.” I was shocked when one sibling showed genuine concern or love for another, like Napoleon, who apparently truly cared about Peri and Camille. Roderick’s two legitimate children, Tammy and Freddie, call the others “the bastards.”

This show has a lot to say in eight episodes. Some things that stuck out to me include the cycles a family can get stuck in. You pass your own trauma, mental illness, etc., onto your kids, intentionally or otherwise. What really makes you rich, or happy, for that matter? How do these companies market poison to the masses? Why do we let them? One scene I particularly enjoy comes near the end. Madeleine starts with this speech that initially sounds like the typical feminist abortion talking point, but the show is smarter and more honest than that, so she soon shows her cards. Madeleine doesn’t care about women, contraception, or the struggles faced by poor people. She came up in an era and industry riddled with sexism. Still, being a narcissist and a heartless businesswoman, she doesn’t care if others must face similar hurdles. This is how I envision those at the top. They may be female or a minority, disabled, etc. But they have money, and we don’t. We can’t fall into the trap of thinking they have the same problems or care about people like us. I love how the dialogue took me from rolling my eyes to nodding in silent agreement in under a minute. 

The cast of House of Usher is fantastic. Most of Flanagan’s regular collaborators are here, but we also have Bruce Greenwood (who starred in Gerald’s Game for Flanagan,) Mark Hamill, Carl Lumbly, and more. The acting is above average throughout, but Hamill does a great job in a very different type of role here. I’ve seen/heard him play villains before, but none like Arthur Pym, the Ushers’ ruthless lawyer. Hamill has a very quiet, reserved scene at the beginning of episode 3, “Murder in the Rue Morgue,” that really shifts the show’s tone. Honestly, I felt over-stimulated at this point. There’s a lot of noise, sex, and swearing in the first two episodes. I don’t have any moral problem with that stuff on TV, but I was in sensory overload. This short scene flips the script and immediately tells the audience a lot about Pym. He’s scheming, methodical, and detail-oriented, and he will do anything to protect the Usher family.

The Ushers are all despicable, but that’s a testament to several more great performances. Tammy possibly grossed me out the most. I know since she’s essentially a cuck, her husband wasn’t cheating on her. But that stuff disgusts me and makes me mad. She treats him like crap during these sequences, and in general; when “Candy” visits instead of the usual girl, this is the first time anyone has asked Bill how he’s doing. Tammy thinks Bill exists solely for her sick pleasure. I know it’s just TV, but that’s the kind of stuff that makes me really mad. I was happy when Tammy died. Samantha Sloyan has been in several of these shows and previously displayed this prowess for hateful she-devils in 2021’s Midnight Mass. Here, Tammy quickly pivots from delight at the sight of Bill with these women to all-consuming jealousy. It’s unreasonable and makes me hate the character more, but it’s a hell of a performance. 

The Fall of the House of Usher is supremely well-written, acted, and lit. I don’t often talk about lighting, but it’s nothing short of striking here. The show isn’t as subtle as Flanagan’s other works (that I’ve seen) and gets needlessly gratuitous at times. But overall, I enjoyed this a lot, and I recommend it. I have so much to say, but I’ll be talking a little more about this on Halloween.