Netflix has plenty of spooky, even scary, options to binge over the Halloween season. Two new shows, in particular, are great options with different vibes. The Fall of the House of Usher is a modern adaption and recontextualizing of Edgar Allen Poe with some inventive horror and genuine scares. Castlevania: Nocturne is an animated vampire action show with plenty of creepy monsters and blood. So gothic horror? Or dark fantasy? Why not both?
The Fall Of The House Of Usher
Horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan has made some of his best work for Netflix. From The Haunting of Hill House to Midnight Mass, to his new series, The Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan has excelled in displaying his ideas about horror and our world. The series is a take on Edgar Allen Poe’s works and details the deaths of a wealthy and morally dubious family dynasty. With The Fall of the House of Usher being his last series with Netflix before he takes his talent to Amazon, the series feels like a culmination of all of his streaming projects so far, bringing together all of his recurring cast members and taking some big swings thematically while adapting well-known source material.
The series follows Roderick Usher, played by Bruce Greenwood and Zach Gilford, a CEO of a pharmaceutical company whose children suddenly start dying one after another after a mysterious stranger (Carla Gugino) from his past reappears. The family’s children are positioned as each having their own personal moral depravities and daddy issues. After having two children with his ex-wife, Roderick had four illegitimate children that he took in when they each became adults, indoctrinating them into the Usher ways of greed and power.
It’s a morality tale with real-life commentary on the pharmaceutical industry and capitalism that is carried by its horror direction and performances from its cast, which features all the actors who have been staples in his other series, including Rahul Kohl and Kate Siegal.
It might not reach the highs of Midnight Mass, which is probably Flanagan’s best and most fully realized series, but it is an incredibly engaging show with some real scares mixed into its dark atmosphere. The big ideas about greed and its mark on our society don’t totally work, and some of the monologues (there are a lot of monologues) are a chore to get through. Despite it not being perfect, the overall morality tale works pretty flawlessly, and the episode-to-episode dread and sense of mystery are constant despite knowing everyone dies in the end. It’s like a very dark and stylish series of scary stories and cautionary tales from a true horror auteur, perfect to watch while in the holiday spirit.
Castlevania: Nocturne
Castlevania is one of Netflix’s biggest successes on its animation front. Based on the popular video game series, the original show ran for four seasons and followed Trevor Belmont and his two companions, Sypha and Alucard, in their fight against the forces of Dracula and his army of terrors. The series featured some of the best American action animation, with its beautiful art style and truly breathtaking action sequences.
Castlevania: Nocturne is a continuation set 300 years later in the midst of the French Revolution following Trevor Belmont’s descendant, Richter, as he tries to stop a vampire messiah from taking over the world.
Nocturne continues with a new Belmont in a new historical setting with a crazy twist to our real-world history. The vampires are siding with the French Aristocracy to squash the coming revolution so that they can feed on the poor masses and usher in a new age of vampire domination. The time period gives the new series a ton of ideas to lay with, with revolution as the major theme.
Joining Richter (Edward Bluemel) on his mission are Annette (Thuso Mbedu), who escaped slavery in the Caribean after the Haitian Revolution, and a young aristocrat, Maria Renard (Pixie Davies), a sorcerer and revolutionary leader. The show positions vampires as so evil that they side with enslavers and the rich and powerful, which could have its pitfalls if not done right, but it works and is an attempt to add even more weight than just the possibility of vampires blotting out the sun for an endless night.
The animation style is different but faithful to the original while being even more stylish and exciting. The action is a high point of the series with its fluid animation that puts a lot of animated shows to shame. The character designs are great, especially the monster and vampire designs, which range from strangely beautiful to grotesque and creepy. The voice acting is phenomenal with a great cast. The only real negative is that the story doesn’t resolve itself, saving the rest for Season Two, which was just recently announced. If you like animation, vampires, dark fantasy, and high-octane action with some great character moments, then Castelvania: Nocturne is an incredible choice.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
