'The Fall Of The House Of Usher' Review: Netflix's New Horror Series
Table Of Content
At home, Madeline tells Annabel that it was the plan all along because now Roderick is the most important employee at Fortunato. He’ll get out of legal trouble right away and will start reaping the benefits at work. She thought Roderick would be a hero, but Madeline shuts her down and shames her for thinking that way. Juno meets with her doctor, making the decision that she wants to get off of Ligodone. She’s on 2,000 milligrams a day, and she no longer wants to be dependent on it.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” takes Poe to another level - The Trinitonian
“The Fall of the House of Usher” takes Poe to another level.
Posted: Fri, 20 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Roderick Usher
However, it’s also a reminder that while the powerful may delay settling a tab, debts must often be paid in blood when collection time comes — whether in one generation or the next. • Roderick and Madeline have a strange and fascinating dynamic (and not just because they sleep in the same bed long after two kids should be doing that). It’s not as if Madeline doesn’t have any power — she’s the COO to Roderick’s CEO — but while Roderick is apparently the public face of the company, she seems like the one who’s truly visionary and decisive behind the scenes.
Bumps in the Night
Frightened, Auguste runs out of the house and watches it completely collapse behind him. Before Auguste arrives at the Usher home, Madeline comes to see Roderick and sits with him in the basement. They share a drink and talk about whether or not they actually believed Verna all those years ago. Madeline gets up but starts to feel woozy before realizing that Roderick must have spiked her drink with something.
Series Info
But as the young Roderick and Madeline sit down at the bar, dressed to the nines, it becomes clear they’ve arrived only to establish a cover story for a hideous crime they’ve committed. They’re greeted by a bartender, Verna — I’ll pause here to note that that’s an anagram of raven — who speaks cryptically about the importance of making a promise to one’s future. At the childhood home in the present timeline, Auguste is confused because he doesn’t think Lenore is dead. But Roderick explains that Madeline used Lenore as a beta test for an AI project, creating a “Lenore bot.” That’s who must be texting him, he believes.
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Also, the framework of the Usher legacy is most poignant when Flanagan shines a light on the twins’ ambitions, even as teens and young adults, as well as their unbridled loyalty to one another. Roderick tells Auguste in the present-day timeline that the details of that night faded away and eventually it just felt like a dream, never to come up again until decades later when his children started dying. Verna tells the siblings that she can guarantee they’ll be running Fortunato, their family will want for nothing, and they’ll never face legal trouble if they take her deal. Madeline would have to die with him as well, as they came into the world together so they have to go out the same.
Though enjoyable, the middle episodes of “The Fall of the House of Usher” do drag a bit. The narrative shifts away from the motivations and desires of the Usher children, focusing more on Roderick and Madeline as perpetrators of the opioid epidemic. This element of the series was often too on the nose, and much less compelling than the random displays of immorality and wickedness that make the Ushers rotten to the core.
“Buy now, pay later — that’s what I say,” says Verna at that fateful New Year’s Eve meeting. It must sound like an appealing offer to those young siblings, so close to a fortune they must feel was their birthright all along. But “pay later” is its own kind of Devil’s bargain, and it looks as though the Usher family’s bill has finally come due. To give Longfellow the smallest of outs, it’s worth noting that Eliza might not accept his help anyway. She’s so devoutly religious that she rejects medical treatment altogether, believing that interfering with a body’s natural state is an insult to God. It’s for that same reason that, after she dies, Roderick and Madeline bury her in the backyard, hoping to honor her beliefs by skipping the embalming.
She falls to the floor and he places her body up on a table, realizing he wants to preserve her as best as possible. He brings out those sapphire eyes, presumably in an effort to mummify her like the Egyptians did. But as we see Roderick point his knife at her, the scene cuts to Auguste asking what he did to her. “I sent her off like a queen, Queen Twosret, as a matter of fact,” Roderick replies, referring to an Egyptian queen who was believed to be mummified.
The content on this site is for entertainment and educational purposes only. All advice, including picks and predictions, is based on individual commentators’ opinions and not that of Minute Media or its related brands. No one should expect to make money from the picks and predictions discussed on this website. But as they continue to hear noise from the basement, Auguste isn’t certain that Madeline is actually dead. Roderick confesses that the biggest lie he’s told is that Fortunato could cure people of pain. But before their conversation continues, Madeline runs up from the basement covered in blood with the sapphire eyes in her eye sockets.
The Fall of the House of Usher‘s premiere episode is mostly about setting up what we’ll be seeing throughout the rest of the season, as each episode (mostly) focuses on one sibling and how they end up dead.
Back to the ’70s, the seventh episode of The Fall of the House of Usher begins with a flashback scene of a younger Roderick and Auguste rehearsing how it’ll go when Roderick goes on the record to speak out against Fortunato. In the present day, Auguste tells Roderick that he really only trusted him because Annabel was such a good person. Tammy gets ready for the launch event but before she’s able to walk up on the stage, she hears someone else’s voice introduce herself as Tammy.
Frederick heads to the building where Perry hosted the party with a crew of guys who are going to tear it down. He asks them to give him a minute while he goes to take care of something inside, and when he walks in he starts doing more cocaine. She tells him that he’s actually snorted the nightshade paralytic that he’s been giving Morrie. As he’s on the floor and unable to get up, Morrie takes out a walkie-talkie, puts on Frederick’s voice, and tells the crew they’re good to bulldoze the building.
He doesn’t take her seriously and instead hits on her before humiliating her by saying she and Roderick have been the laughingstock of the office for years because their mom was knocked up by Longfellow. Madeline goes home and tells Roderick, Auguste, and Annabel all about it. Auguste says it’s a good thing Griswold underestimates Roderick because it’ll be easier to take down Fortunato that way. One of the other storylines in this episode revolves around Madeline, Roderick, and Arthur digging into the identity of this mysterious woman who keeps popping up everywhere.
There, they’ll be served all sorts of drugs, alcohol, and anything else they desire. Frederick lays into Prospero particularly hard at a meeting with lawyers about the old properties, so it seems like extending an invite to his wife is Prospero’s way of exacting revenge. The real surprise is that Morelle is interested and actually shows up at the party. Roderick and Madeline demand every member of the family attend a dinner where they’re forced to sign ironclad NDAs to protect themselves from the informant possibly spilling something that could ruin them.
Bill says that Tammy must be losing it and reminds her that the hookers were her idea before walking away. Victorine’s girlfriend Al confronts her, upset that she scheduled a patient for surgery without telling her. Victorine tries to explain but Al doesn’t want to hear it because they still aren’t ready for human trials.
They’re embroiled in a legal case over alleged mismarketing of their product that has led to the deaths of many. And when members of the Usher family start dropping off one by one, it becomes apparent that something far more sinister is afoot. The Fall of the House of Usher is an American gothic horror drama television miniseries created by Mike Flanagan.
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