Table Of Content
From the start of the first episode of The Fall of the House of Usher, we know that all of Roderick Usher's children are dead. It's the how and the why of their deaths that plays out over the course of Mike Flanagan's new horror anthology series, now streaming on Netflix. In November 2023, Roderick Usher, the CEO of pharmaceutical company Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, loses all six of his children within two weeks. Auguste Dupin, an Assistant United States Attorney who dedicated his career to exposing Fortunato's corruption, to his childhood home, where he tells the true story of his family and unveils the Ushers' darkest secrets. Might we then interpret Roderick as a symbol of the conscious mind – struggling to conceal some dark ‘secret’ and make himself presentable to his friend, the narrator – and Madeline as a symbol of the unconscious?
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All eight episodes were released on Netflix on October 12, 2023, each directed by either Flanagan or Michael Fimognari, with the latter also acting as cinematographer for the entire series. Lenore’s mother, Morella, recovers well after she’s moved to a proper clinic. It takes years of procedures and reconstructive surgery, but she endures it. She also inherits a fortune when Fortunato collapses, and she gives most of it away to domestic violence and abuse charities. But she keeps enough to start a nonprofit, setting up chapters all over the world. She calls it the Lenore Foundation after her daughter, and in a decade alone, she saves millions of lives.
The Masque of the Red Death
But Verna wasn't willing to let him get off that easy and brought him back to face the full extent of his reckoning, the death of his granddaughter Lenore (Kyliegh Curran), the only morally good Usher. In 2002, Ken Russell produced a horror comedy version titles The Fall of the Louse of Usher. A television adaptation was produced by ATV for the ITV network in 1966 for the horror anthology series Mystery and Imagination. In the Roger Corman film from 1960, released in the United States as House of Usher, Vincent Price starred as Roderick Usher, Myrna Fahey as Madeline and Mark Damon as Philip Winthrop, Madeline's fiancé.
The House of Usher
This time, Flanagan’s ghoulish crew is entering familial territory, as ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege, and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth. When one steps back and looks at the whole narrative of the season of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” it sags in places. Most of the flashbacks to a young Usher and Dupin are thin, especially compared to the wicked fun on display in the fates of the Usher children. It feels like padding to get episodes to a full hour when Flanagan and company could have leaned even more into the episodic structure that highlights a single Poe per chapter.
Tamerlane Usher
From his arrival, the narrator notes the family's isolationist tendencies, as well as the cryptic and special connection between Madeline and Roderick, the final living members of the Usher family. Throughout the tale and her varying states of consciousness, Madeline completely ignores the narrator's presence. After Roderick Usher claims that Madeline has died, the narrator helps Usher entomb Madeline in an underground vault despite noticing Madeline's flushed, lifelike appearance. The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline, bloodied from her arduous escape from the tomb.
In film and television
Poe condenses these into a short story and plays around with them, locating new psychological depths within these features. Usher has been reimagined as the head of a massive pharmaceutical company he runs with his twin sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell). Every episode includes flashbacks to a young Roderick (Zach Gilford), Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald), and Annabel Lee (Katie Parker), Roderick’s first wife. These fill in how the Ushers made their fortune, but they’re kind of a narrative drag. It’s important that Roderick and Madeline are cruel, selfish creatures—less so how they got that way. What’s more interesting is to watch how the fallout of their decisions fell on Roderick’s many children, all torn apart by some of Poe’s most memorable creations.
Every Edgar Allan Poe Reference In ‘Fall of the House of Usher' - TODAY
Every Edgar Allan Poe Reference In ‘Fall of the House of Usher'.
Posted: Wed, 25 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
All About The Fall of the House of Usher
“When you’re done, at the end of it all… just before you would have died anyway, your bloodline dies with you,” Verna offers them. The two scrappy Ushers, who came into the world together, would leave the world together, atop a hill of riches, excess… and bodies. By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes. By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies, and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands. For instance, it has sometimes been suggested that Roderick’s relationship with Madeline echoes Poe’s own relationship with his young wife (who was also his cousin), Virginia, who fell ill, as Madeline has.
It is revealed that Roderick's sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. Roderick and Madeline are the only remaining members of the Usher family. The film will be produced by former CAA Agent Lauren Hale-Rieckhoff, in association with Vinyl Foote Productions. Avy Kaufman cast the leads and supporting players are expected to be announced shortly.
Netflix’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Is a Gruesome Family Drama Wrapped in a Web of Edgar Allan Poe: TV Review - Variety
Netflix’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Is a Gruesome Family Drama Wrapped in a Web of Edgar Allan Poe: TV Review.
Posted: Wed, 11 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
English majors will likely know where some of the stories are going just by seeing the episode names. When the young and trendy Prospero Usher (Sauriyan Sapkota) decides to host an exclusive sex-and-drugs party at one of dad’s old factories in an abbey, readers of The Masque of the Red Death will know it’s going to be a gruesome scene. However, Flanagan is smart enough to shift the Poe narratives ever so slightly for a modern audience. His version of The Tell-Tale Heart is a modern gem, and “The Gold-Bug” is reimagined as a new brand for the Usher company. But the themes remain the same—guilt, obsession, vengeance, and a supernatural sense of justice. Roderick Usher’s children are getting what they deserve, not merely because they are the fruit of a very poisoned tree but because they have made horrific decisions to stay in the shelter of wealth and privilege.
Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) attends a joint funeral for a number of his adult children, and in a montage of press coverage, we see how a series of “freak accidents” has wiped out his entire bloodline. The Usher patriarch then sits in a dilapidated mansion with Carl Lumbly’s Auguste Dupin (based on Poe’s famous recurring character who is considered the first detective in fiction) and offers him a confession. We then flash back a few weeks to when the Usher clan were on top of the world, having become Sackler-esque billionaires peddling opiates that have inflicted untold misery on the American public, and begin to watch their painful demise. Flanagan has form with making tributes to some of horror’s most beloved oeuvres. He took on Shirley Jackson in The Haunting of Hill House (which was fabulous), Henry James in The Haunting of Bly Manor (spooky but saccharine) and Christopher Pike in The Midnight Club (meh). Thankfully, Flanagan and Poe’s sensibilities prove a winning pairing, staying on the edge of terror without cascading into jump scares and sentimentality.
Roderick’s first wife and only true love, Annabel Lee (Katie Parker), leaves him after he betrayed his sense of integrity and threw young investigator C. Auguste Dupin (Malcolm Goodwin) under the bus to get ahead at Fortunato. Auguste (portrayed in the present by Carl Lumbly) later tells Roderick that the only reason he trusted him back then was because he trusted the good-hearted Annabel Lee. Max's show started the year off with some spooky vibes on Jan. 15, 2023.
After the disastrous launch of her Goldbug company, Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan) returns home to see visions of Verna (dressed as her doppelgänger) reflected back at her in every mirror of her house. She chases after Verna with a fire poker and smashes nearly all of the mirrors, ultimately hitting the mirrored ceiling above her bed as she cries about messing everything up. Shards fall down and stab her to the eternal sleep that Verna knows she desperately needs. Camille (Kate Siegel) couldn’t let her animosity toward her half-sister, Victorine LaFourcade (T’Nia Miller), rest, so she goes to Vic’s research facility to dig up more dirt on her unethical experiments. They’ll get the whole world — running Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, making more money than they could ever imagine, literally getting away with murder — all sans consequences.
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