Netflix's The Fall of the House of Usher (eight-part) miniseries, created by Mike (The Haunting of Hill House) Flanagan, smacks of Alan Birkinshaw's 1989 adaptation (the one with Oliver Reed and Donald Pleasance) and the director's 1991 Masque of the Red Death (the one with Herbert Lom and Frank Stallone), in that it's modernized and multi-referenced, though because of its serialized format, it rolls for the most part as an Edgar Allan Poe revamp of Dallas or Dynasty, planted in beleaguered NYC.
For Usher 2023, the clan consists of more than brother and sister, its many relatives in charge of the deceptive Fortunato Pharmaceuticals, helmed (of course) by the four-million-buck, cognac-savoring Roderick Usher, who resides in his dilapidated, childhood home, taking machoistic delight in smelling its rot.
We learn that, one by one, this media-manipulating, crime family has fallen ... killed, that is, by some clandestine catalyst, in one classic, terror tale at a time, leaving one to wonder how and why. Are these ghastly deaths the result of an alleged, Usher mole; basic, vicious vindication; common karma; or something far deeper, far darker?
The cast consists of Bruce (Nowhere Man) Greenwood as family patriarch, Roderick (a role which commenced with Frank Langella, until a particular accusation struck); Graham Verchere as younger Roderick; Mary McDonnell as Madeline Usher; Willa Fitzgerald as younger Madeline; Ruth Codd as Juno Usher; Henry Thomas as Frederick Usher; Rahul Kohli as Napoleon Usher; Samantha Sloyan as Tamerlane Usher; Crystal Balint as Morelle Usher; Sauriyan Sapkota as Prospero Usher; Kyleigh Curran as Lenore Usher; Annabeth Gish as Eliza Usher; Kate Siegel as Camille L'Espanaye; T'nia Miller as Victorine LaFourcade; Carla Guigno as the ubiquitous Verna (rearrange those letters and see what emerges); Katie Parker as Annabel Lee; Robert Longstreet as William Longfellow; Michael Trucco as Rufus Griswold; Carl Lumbly as C. Auguste Dupin; Malcolm Goodwin as younger Auguste; and Mark Hamill as ex-explorer, Arthur Pym, or the "Pym Reaper," as he's been coined, an unscrupulous attorney for an unscrupulous corporation.
As one may infer from the hefty list, there's much intermingling of other Poe people and their fated events (beyond even Roderick's brats) to string the concept along, leaving the Usher fable a wraparound that anchors the rest.
That the family, which deals in things more simulated than sincere, meets its comeuppance feels right, but in the same vein, that its members are so self-serving makes it near impossible to embrace them. For the long stretch, a little more sympathy (i.e. more immediate humility) could have been invested, and beyond those few, tender moments that the reflective Roderick grants, there's never an earnest attempt to employ such. Then again, perhaps the pervading, callousness is apt. Regardless of any reinterpreted novelties (as the artsy Spirits of the Dead taught us), Poe should never be cheery and bright.
Outside the Poe nods, this new Usher is an elongated murder mystery and therefore, a borderline Ten Little Indians meets Friday the 13th, though Murders in the Rue Morgue always played that prophetic card, I guess.
If Netflix and Flanagan were so inclined, Dupin (if he returned to his humble, detective roots) could head his own series, investigating weird cases, ala Carl Kolchak, stalking fiends per clues in peculiar, purloined letters, but I've a hunch the chosen, soap-opera approach (rubbed by the founding season's Faustian flecks; sporadic, Roger Corman psychedelia; and obligatory, socio-political lament) will permeate, shaping this Usher as more of an extended competitor to Dark Shadows, Twin Peaks and Penny Dreadful than any other presumptuous derivations.
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