The Fall of the House of Usher: Mike Flanagan’s Unhinged Edgar Allan Poe Mashup Is Dark and Lyrical

The Fall of the House of Usher is most likely creator Mike Flanagan’s last horror series for Netflix, and while the idea of him getting Amazon dollars to take a crack at Stephen King’s seemingly eternally unadaptable The Dark Tower novels is certainly (extremely) appealing, it’s difficult not to mourn this loss. No one else in this space (or, let’s face it, on this streamer) is doing what Flanagan does, mining our deepest emotional fears and unspoken desires for the sort of real-life nightmare fuel that’s much, much scarier than any monster under the bed. Through stories that wrestle with everything from questions of faith and belief to falling in love and what it means to truly die, Flanagan’s deeply human horror universe is truly something beautiful to behold. Happily, if this really is the end, he’s certainly going out with a bang, bringing back upwards of twenty of the actors who have appeared in properties ranging from The Haunting of Hill House to Gerald’s Game, for a big, splashy, and often completely unhinged ode to OG horror maestro Edgar Allan Poe. 

Though the series is primarily grounded in Poe’s titular short story of the Usher siblings, Flanagan deftly mixes in elements from many of the author’s other famous works, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Black Cat,” and more. Episodes are freely littered with Poe references large and small, from character names to full-on poetry recitations—that this show is probably going to introduce so many people to “The City in the Sea” is a particular delight—and the series’ larger story reflects the author’s lifelong fascination with themes of guilt, death, paranoia, obsession, and delusion. 

Like the original work the series is named after, The Fall of the House of Usher technically follows the story of twins Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) and Madeline (Mary McDonnell). Here, however, the Ushers are a pair of ride-or-die siblings who have done almost everything together throughout their lives. They have survived a traumatic childhood, an abusive spell in the foster system, poverty, humiliation, and despair. They have lied, schemed, betrayed those who cared about them, and even done murder, all to earn their place together as heads of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, a gambit that has made them successful beyond their wildest dreams. 

Sure, their grand plans of changing the world for the better have basically devolved into selling a slightly nicer but possibly even more addictive version of oxycontin to the masses and Roderick’s six children have all grown up to be hyper-competitive try-hards painfully desperate for dad’s approval, but the fact that the Usher siblings have turned their scrappy little twosome into an empire is something they’re rightfully proud of. But when the heirs begin to die under mysterious (and increasingly gruesome) circumstances, seemingly at the hands of a mysterious woman from Roderick and Madeline’s past, it seems as though darker forces than simple corporate backstabbing may be at work. 

The eight-episode series begins as an older Roderick is recounting his family’s tale of tragedy by way of an extended fireside confession to C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), the prosecutor who’s been trying to bring the so-called “Usher Crime Family” down for decades and hold them accountable for the many lives lost to their products. His reasons for telling this story—and for telling it to this specific person—are revealed over the course of the series, which unfolds in split timelines that detail both Roderick and Madeline’s youth (with the young Ushers played by Zach Gilford and Willa Fitzgerald) and the increasingly disturbing and horrific deaths of each of his children.

One part horror-tinged Succession knockoff and one part modern day morality play, 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. The fact that Usher tells its audience pretty much immediately all the kids are dead by the show’s end renders them strangely sympathetic, even as most of them commit a string of objectively horrible actions. (It also allows us, as viewers, to revel in their worst deeds without apology—after all, if they’re not long for this world, we all might as well have some fun!)

Eldest son Frederick (Henry Thomas) is the natural heir to his father’s empire, but despite his elevated status, he’s wracked by insecurity and jealousy. Tamerlaine (Samantha Sloyan), determined to step out of Roderick’s long shadow, is attempting to launch a health and wellness subscription called Goldbug and has actively framed her life and image to match its vision. Eldest Usher bastard Victorine Lafourcade (T’nia Miller)—Roderick has an open-door policy when it comes to accepting any and all children he may have fathered outside wedlock into the family—turns to medicine, but when her father shows an interest in her potentially revolutionary new heart technology, she starts cutting dangerous corners to impress him. Napoleon “Leo” Usher (Rahul Kohli) funds video game developers and does a lot of drugs. Camille L’Espanaye (Kate Siegel) is the Usher family’s cruel and cunning PR whiz, and youngest child Prospero “Perry” Usher is a party boy whose grandest ambition is launching a franchise of nightclubs where the elite can indulge in their worst excesses without the threat of consequence. 

In short, Roderick hasn’t exactly raised a bunch of angels. But as each of them is targeted by the strange, shape-shifting woman named Verna (Carla Gugino), the series leans into the almost tragic idea that each member of the family carries within them the seeds of both their own salvation and destruction—although it’s largely left up to the viewer to decide whether the terrible fates that befall them are justice for their father’s actions or their own. After all, can these kids be anything other than what Roderick has made them? Could they have ever truly chosen different lives?

The Usher heirs are all played by a group of Flanaverse regulars: Sloyan is a particular standout, as a Tamerlaine desperate to escape the Usher roots her illegitimate siblings would do anything to share, and Miller’s Victorine gets what is possibly the most tragic end of any character. Gugino is obviously having a blast playing the often extremely over-the-top Verna, who gets to wreak havoc in a variety of dramatic outfits and bland disguises. But it is the fierce chemistry between Greenwood and McDonnell (and Gilford and Fitzgerald in flashback form) that grounds the story’s propulsive emotional center. Nothing about Usher works if you don’t believe in the unbreakable bond between Roderick and Madeline, or the pair’s bone-deep commitment to one another, for better or worse, and in betrayal or triumph. If anything, the show doesn’t really give us quite enough of Madeline on her own, but perhaps that’s meant to illustrate how intrinsically the twins’ lives are ultimately wound through each other’s. (Or that’s just me wanting as much of McDonnell as I can get, always. Who can say!)

The Fall of the House of Usher is a horror story, and it’s one that feels a bit crueler and more traditional than some of Flanagan’s more recent efforts like The Midnight Club or Midnight Mass. (Likely because it’s paying homage to the man who created many of the tropes we still associate with this genre today.) But, although the series features no shortage of blood and gore—and several very disturbing animal deaths viewers who are sensitive to such things should watch out for—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. Maybe the Ushers are always fated to be doomed in every story, but Flanagan’s take on their fall is one that at least tries to ask who they might have been if they weren’t. 

The Fall of the House of Usher premieres October 12 on Netflix.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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