What’s this? A new adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House? Color me as excited as Jack Skellington discovering Christmas for the first time. What’s this? As an adaptation of what is widely called “the greatest haunted-house story ever written”, we get a big budget, atmospheric TV series based on the deepest Southern Gothic psychological thriller in American history? Ooooh, goosebumps! Cue the Shirley Jackson quotes - hey, here it is to save you the trouble of Wikiquoting it:

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

My body is ready! Thrill me!

Oh, what’s this? Netflix is producing it? - RECORD SCRATCH -

Very well then. Put the novel back in the forgotten keepsakes trunk right next to the tear-stained copy of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and your high school essay on The Lottery. As you can tell right from the trailer, Netflix’s The Haunting Of Hill House rips the title off Jackson’s novel and neglects the rest. That’s right, they managed to make an even looser adaptation than 1999‘s The Haunting, though at least they aren’t going to waste any more of Lili Taylor’s time.

That being said, it appears Netflix’s haunted-something-house series has its own story. It’s about a family whose children grew up in the title house, then as adults have to return to it to confront the supernatural forces that still hold sway over them. Yeah, sounds more like Stephen King’s It than anything else. If you surgically remove the part of your brain that remembers how to read, it looks like a decent scary ghost story on its own.

There’s just no sane reason to even bother titling it after Shirley Jackson’s work; they could have named it anything else. Browsing the cast list, there is a character called Theo and even a character called Shirley, but no Eleanor. Why does Netflix keep doing this to itself? Why? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me?

Well, at least we have the 1963 adaptation. It’s a tough act to follow.