Now that we're well and truly into spooky season, it's time to find ourselves a new horror obsession to binge and it seems as though Netflix's latest release is the perfect match for what we're looking for.
Titled The Fall of the House of Usher, the series is based around two "ruthless" siblings who build a family dynasty that begins to crumble when their heirs mysteriously die, one by one.
There are some big names in the cast lineup, including Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Rahul Kohli, and Mary McDonnell, who star in the miniseries directed by Mike Flanagan.
If that name rings a bell for you, it might be because Flanagan also directed another popular horror/thriller series that debuted on the platform back in 2018 and was renewed for a second season due to its incredible popularity - The Haunting of Hill House and it's follow-up, The Haunting of Bly Manor - both of which earned themselves respectable ratings on multiple platforms online.
While further plot details are still primarily being kept hush-hush about the new project, which is officially set to be released on the streaming platform tomorrow (October 12), it has already received a positive reaction on Rotten Tomatoes.
As per the official Tomatometer, the series has already received an impressive 94% thanks to 49 critic reviews.
Valerie Anne Liston, who has been described as a "Top Critic" for the platform, wrote: "Mike Flanagan’s writing and the specific actors he casts make everything sound like poetry."
Andrew Parker of The Gate also had positive words to say writing: "Filmmaker Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix series, The Fall of the House of Usher, is a deliriously gory and ghoulish seasonal offering that adeptly straddles the line between the silly and the smart."
Richard Lawson from Vanity Fair also wrote: "By the end of House of Usher, we feel we have made our way through something dense and rich. This is not flimsy, forgettable TV. Flanagan’s ardent belief in the power of monologue and melodrama, of complex storytelling and florid style, is infectious."
However, some critics weren't as impressed, though there was only a small handful of those.
Candice Frederick of the Huffington Post described the show as "too straightforward" adding "[it was] shockingly mundane, especially coming from Flanagan."
Carla Gugino, who plays Verna in the upcoming series, revealed some details about it, telling Netflix: "It’s bats*** crazy in the best possible way."
She continued. "It has quite a lot of very dark humor, but also really touches the soul." In the series, Gugino portrays a shape-shifter named Verna, whose origins can be traced back to a — let’s just say — very famous Poe character.
"There is a fantastical supernatural element to the story, and she is the manifestation of that," she said before adding: "You could say she’s the executor of fate or the executor of karma."
The Fall of the House of Usher will be available to watch on Netflix on October 12.
