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The Haunting of Hill House: Film Platypus

I'm currently in the middle of Netflix's series "The Haunting of Hill House". I've never read the book, but the writers, director, and cast have turned it into a powerful piece of film. This is the kind of thing I wish I could write and can't get close to even on my best days.

Like so many of the best Horror pieces, this one isn't about ghosts and ghoulies so much as it is about how families and individuals respond to trauma. The "haunting" is first and foremost a metaphor. The labyrinthine eponymous house is a metaphor for the twists and turns of the human mind. We all have our ghosts. Some of choose to flee into addiction. Some of us build up walls. Others of us choose to role play confidence we don't feel or dependency in the hope that others will solve our problems for us. Of course, we can confront our fears, but that is where the real problem lies.

If we go it alone, our horrors can overwhelm us. It is not good for Man to be alone. Enter the need for community and community at its most basic: the family. But communities are broken and families are made up of broken individuals. That is the "The Haunting of Hill House": how do we face our demons in an imperfect and broken world. Does our brokenness doom us to be forever "trapped in the house" as part of an "infernal family"? After all, Sartre said "Hell is other people".

I haven't finished the series yet, so I'll hold off on any further comments. In the meantime, here is my first homage to this horror classic: "The Bent Neck Lady". I didn't see it coming. Did you?

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