Holidays with ghosts
It all starts with Danielle Clayton. A woman, intrigued by the offer of a job as a governess on an English country estate, comes to the interview and soon starts working at Bly, where she is to look after two children, Flora and Miles. Apart from Dani and her new wards, there is also Mrs. Grose, the mansion manager, and cook Owen and gardener Jamie arrive daily and work with Bly.
The new governess quickly realizes that there are dark secrets hidden under the nicely tailored sheath and that nothing is as it may seem at first glance. The children behave atypically, the house lives a ghastly life, and Dani herself has to live up to nightmares from her own past that have followed her even to Bly.
Literary inspiration
The second season of the series about haunted houses ( The Haunting ) was based on a short novel by the American writer Henry James, entitled The Turn of the Screw (on the Polish publishing market the title functions as Tightening the Screw or In the Forceps of Fear ). It provides the basis for the story presented in the series – a governess comes to the house and discovers that it is haunted, and the whole thing is crowned with the appearance of Peter Quint behind one of the windows and the death of Miles.
As you might have guessed, the authors decided to introduce many changes to the literary original. The most important of these is to take the action time several decades into the future and significantly expand the storyline and add a few more to add more depth to the story of the haunted house. The Netflix adaptation also gained new heroes and their independent dilemmas, as well as an additional historical layer and a whole range of ghosts and ghosts beyond those from the canon (such as Peter Quint or Miss Jessel) that wander around the court at night and appear in the background of many scenes.
Atmospheric gothic cinema
The Haunted Manor in Bly differs significantly from its predecessor, the Haunted House on the Hill , mainly in terms of the atmosphere and pace of action. It is not a horror in the traditional sense of the word, fear and tension are built by showing the character of the main character, in which every day the uncertainty and terror grows. In terms of genre, this season fits more into the gothic cinema, which focuses more on building the atmosphere and tension (mainly through camera work) than on causing terror or shocking the viewer at every step. Additionally, the creators reward attentive viewers – each episode is full of ghosts and phantoms hidden in various frames, standing in the background, in dark corners, or peeking out from behind pillars.
Taking into account the drawer structure of the production – the story of the haunted house is told by one of the participants of the rehearsal wedding dinner of people unknown to us – the action unfolds slowly, and many scenes contain the narrative of a woman telling her story in a different time and place. Therefore, a lot of screen time is devoted to accurately presenting and problematizing the events, so that the viewer, just like the rest of the party’s participants, is slowly drawn into Bly. The creators give themselves space to build an atmosphere of anxiety that will grow with each episode to find an outlet in the finale.
I must also mention the phenomenal cast, partly composed of the cast of the first season of the anthology, such as Victoria Perdetti (Dani) or Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Peter Quint). Child actors Amelie Bea Smith (Flora) and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth (Miles) deserve special mention, whose performances largely contribute to evoking extreme emotions in the viewer.
Not quite horror, but rather haunted
Many fans of the first season of the anthology are not happy with its second installment, precisely because it is not scary enough and does not fit into the classic understanding of horror. I myself am in a different – perhaps less numerous – group of people who liked the Haunted Manor in Bly more than his predecessor. There is something extremely captivating about this uncertainty and understatement, as well as looking for clues to solve the mysteries of the household and household members.
If you’re looking for an atmospheric ghost series that is brilliantly written and played, and focuses more on building suspense than cheap jump scares, Bly ‘s Haunted Manor is definitely for you!
