Is The Fall of The House of Usher Scary? A Horror Guide for Chickens

For the past five years, come October, we’ve grown accustomed to receiving a new Mike Flanagan horror series. It also means that, for the past five years, scaredy-cats all over the world have been frantically searching up just how terrifying each of his shows are, and whether or not we’re equipped to handle it.

Netflix’s latest and final collaboration with the horror auteur takes on added layers of suspense. Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, The Fall of the House of Usher melds together a number of classic Poe tales—such as “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”—into one sprawling family tragedy. The Usher family, led by siblings Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) and Madeline (Mary McDonnell) have been untouchable for decades, thanks to their uber-successful and corrupt pharmaceutical empire. But when all six of Roderick’s children die within the span of a week, he invites prosecutor C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) to his desolate childhood home to confess his crimes—including the real reason for why all of his kids are now dead.

It’s an intriguing enough premise on its own, but what makes a Flanagan series so spectacular is how he uses horror as a vehicle for amplifying our emotional fears, rather than just capitalizing off our external ones. The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor are devastating sister-tales about ghosts and familial loss; Midnight Mass is an intimate study on religious trauma; and The Midnight Club explores grief and mortality from a YA lens.

As Paste’s Lacy Baugher Milas wrote in her review, “The Fall of the House of Usher is both a darkly comedic excoriation of the uber-rich and a slow-moving emotional car crash that explores the dysfunction at the heart of a family that’s losing its members one by one […] It is, much like his other works, about so much more than simple jump scares or overt violence. A story of the long tail impact of trauma, it is a darkly funny and emotionally rich tragedy that grounds itself in our universal longing for love and human connection.” 

Judging the show based on its Flanagan Fright Factor, Usher lands on the lower end in terms of horror. It’s nowhere near as unsettling as Hill House, but definitely still scarier than The Midnight Club. I’d even argue that Usher is less spooky than both Bly Manor and Midnight Mass. Even with a supernatural demon terrorizing the Usher family, the show doesn’t feel too far from your typical prestige corporate drama—it’s like an off-brand version of Succession, but with a major gothic vibe. Plus, if you’re yearning for another horrible rich family to become obsessed with, the Ushers may temporarily fill that Roy family void we’ve all been feeling.

Usher isn’t really as scary as it is just gross. Each Usher kid receives an episode that recounts the gruesome details to how they die, some of which are more horrifying than others. While they’re all pretty grueling, Episode 2 (“The Masque of the Red Death”) has a rather nasty death that could be particularly difficult to watch if you’re especially squeamish to blood and gore. There’s also some animal harm featured in the first half of the season for viewers who are sensitive to that. But I’d say that if you can make it past the second episode, the rest of the deaths shouldn’t be too bad.

So, for all the scaredy-cats and chickens out there who always feel left out by the annual horror festivities, fear not! You will be capable of tuning into The Fall of the House of Usher. If I can watch the show—and I’m still afraid of the movie Coraline—then it’s sure to be a walk in the park. Of course, this isn’t to say that it’s not scary. There are a number of jump scares scattered throughout each episode that might give you a quick start (expect to see dead and bloody Usher ghosts spring on-screen unannounced). But even then, none of them are especially traumatizing. Maybe a little disturbing, but completely manageable. I’d even go as far as to say that, out of every show in the Flanaverse, you may be able to watch this one at night like everyone else! (But maybe ease into it, just in case…)

The Fall of the House of Usher is now streaming on Netflix. 

Dianna Shen is an entertainment writer based in New York. When she’s not crying over a rom-com, she can be found on Twitter @ddiannashen.

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