Horror fans have been waiting in the shadows with the lights off for months now, patiently anticipating The Fall of the House of Usher. After all, when there’s a new Mike Flanagan project on the horizon, fright fans sit up and take notice. And if the reviews are anything to go by, the master of the macabre has served up another winner.
Based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story, The Fall of the House of Usher is the latest (and final, for now) fruit to come from Mike Flanagan‘s link-up with Netflix. He has already made several of the best horror series around with the likes of Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill House and, from what we hear, Usher joins that list.
Our own critic James Osborne lavished praise on one of the year’s best Netflix series in his four-star Fall of the House of Usher review. He wrote that the show “feels like some sort of celebratory culmination of the filmmaker’s work” and is a “deliciously ghastly and gruesome” treat.
Flanagan has gifted us some of the best horror movies in years and his pivot to making the best TV series for horror fans has been a very welcome one. That’s certainly true of Usher which, at the time of writing, has a 100% perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes.
There was wide praise for the series’ plot, which focuses on Roderick Usher as a pharmaceutical boss at the head of a dynasty made up of his ambitious and eager-to-please children. Sounds like plenty to chew on when the Fall of the House of Usher release date arrives.
Collider wrote that Flanagan’s series successfully combines Poe with Succession for a great series. In their words, it’s the filmmaker’s “most conventional horror series” and emerges as “suitably creepy” despite its storytelling bloat.
The seasoned horror experts over at Bloody Disgusting also penned a positive review and noted that it’s “difficult not to be enthralled” by the show. IGN said, quite simply, that “there’s not a moment where The Fall of the House of Usher doesn’t shine”.
You can’t ask for much higher praise than that for the latest chapter of the Flanaverse. Spooky season will soon be upon us and, in between our rewatches of the best Halloween movies, we’ll be delving into Flanagan’s world to experience The Fall of the House of Usher in all of its gory, Gothic glory.
For more of what’s new on Netflix, check out our feature celebrating Sex Education as our first ever sex-positive TV series and find out how to watch the best HBO series ever made on Netflix. We’re also looking ahead to Wednesday season 2 and have all of the info you need on the best Netflix anime.