I had a bit of a moment this week. A whole bunch of stuff popped up in my YouTube suggested videos list to do with cinemasins, which started out as a relief from the constant barrage of unsolicited WWE commentary and guitarists who feel like being snippy about people's left hand picking technique is a valid source of comedy but quickly became a concern. Cinemasins, for those unaware of it, is a channel that has nitpicked its way to millions of views and subscribers. The problem is that they consistently and deliberately seem to miss the entire point of scenes, characters, dialogue and even whole movies purely for the sake of cheap gags often involving their own boner or unnecessarily ragging on Black Widow because she's doing more than just giving them a boner. I'm not looking for a hand to hold or any sort of affirmation that I'm a good person or anything, but I did have a fleeting moment of revulsion when I thought that people might see Anger in a Man Suit the same way. I don't think I do that; I like to think that even though my levels of snark can sometimes reach near toxic concentrations, I'm never willingly obtuse just to get up to a word count. Anyway, here's the deal; if that ever becomes the case and I ever become a one dimensional shit rag, I'm 100% done with this and I'll find some other way of channelling my not inconsiderable rage into something productive.
I mention this because I'm about to embark on a journey into the realms of unpopularity. More so than usual in fact. I've always been a firm believer that everyone's opinion is valid, just as much as I've always been of the opinion that just because something is popular doesn't automatically guarantee its any good and I'm never one to shy away from prodding the popular if I feel like it's warranted. With all that in mind, I found myself party to all 10 hours of The Haunting of Hill House over the weekend and frankly I'm not terribly happy about it. No sir.
Halloween brings out a seemingly limitless parade of horror movies on pretty much every streaming service and amongst these, The Haunting of Hill House arrived with much fanfare and anticipation; a Netflix original series no doubt full of spooky goings on, creepy shenanigans and general paranormal fare to slake the ever-increasing thirst for blood October invariably inspires. Personally I couldn't give many fewer shits about Halloween or the procession of idiocy that Trick or Treat is, but I also know when I'm in a minority and you have to pick your battles. Here's the thing; everybody seems to love Haunting of Hill House but honestly without the shiny production values and relatively well-known names amongst the cast this would have sailed anonymously under everyone's radar and nobody would have cared one jot. Not even on single, solitary jot Sir. Nothing. I just found the whole thing super dull for about nine and a half hours and then incomprehensible toss for the last thirty minutes.
It was very difficult for me to find anything particularly inspiring; over the course of ten episodes it regularly went over previous scenes from a slightly different perspective which I absolutely understand was necessary as a storytelling device, but for me it dragged the whole thing out for seemingly weeks and weeks. It made a rod for its own back right from the start though because underneath the spangly top coat it's just a haunted house movie and not a lot else, so where do you go from there? Two options really; go full bore with the scares and hope people are too terrified to notice the ropey acting or amp up the emotes until there isn't a dry eye in the house and they physically can't see the thin veneer covering the cracks. Seems like they went for number two which leaves you a big problem. It just isn't scary.
Don't get me wrong, there are jump scares and there are creepy bits; maybe I'm just so jaded nowadays that I can see them coming a mile off and even now to the point where I can spot a fake jump scare just as easily. I don't think I'm missing the point; this is a haunted house thing right? With ghosts and malevolent spirits and the like, preying on kids and turning people insane. I mean, those things happen, but it takes a back seat to the trials and tribulations of their adult selves which is where most of the self-inflicted foot-shooting occurs: these kids grow up into such a dislikeable gaggle of idiots I was actively willing the House to win in the end. In fairness, you can see why they all turn out to be such objectionable assholes, given their traumatic childhoods culminating in the suicide of their Mum, but I just couldn't engage. Maybe it's me again, but I can't fathom why you'd root for any of these self-destructive, lying, adulterous and manipulative jerks. They seem to be falling over one another in a competition to see who can out-dickhead the others, which is probably fairly accurate for a family of 5 kids but just made me want to slap them all.
Typically, everything is dragged out forever; everybody gets their own episode to explain what ghost made who into what kind of flawed human they become and people are weeping into their socks over the bent neck woman, but without spoiling it for you, I just found it perplexing. There is a 30 minute exposition-fest at the end which does tie the myriad time-mangling loose ends together but the whole dialogue between the newly reunited parents suffers from the same verbal diarrhoea that afflicted the Architect in the Matrix and it's just nonsense. That and everyone gets out of jail a bit too easy as it were. Suddenly out of nowhere everyone is able to bypass years of ingrained psychology and flip their characters to the saccharin side of wholesome; the junkie stays clean for basically ever, the adulteress is forgiven in a heartbeat, the manipulative women-using lesbian settles down and comes to accept her touch-based empathetic powers (yes really) and the dude who lied to his wife for years about his vasectomy conceives the shit out of a baby. It's either way too convenient or way too schmaltzy for my liking, I haven't quite decided. People across the Internet are outwardly weeping over the end though so I guess it's mission accomplished.
I realise that I'm coming across a touch snarky, but you know what? I'm kind of at the point where I think a marquis Halloween event about a haunted house ought to be, you know, a little bit terrifying maybe? I dunno, maybe I'll just stick to old cartoons and films with explosions.
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