Poe, Pills and Pain in ‘The House of Usher’

“You’re all monsters.” The members of the wealthy Usher family hear it often. They are in the world of the macabre miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher perhaps the most hated family in America. Due to their aggressive promotion of a highly addictive painkiller, they and their pharmaceutical company Fortunato are seen as primarily responsible for the country’s opiate crisis. The family itself, led by paterfamilias Roderick Usher, sees itself more as royals that are not understood by the common people. Someone has to do it, so to speak.

Roderick and his six children consider themselves inviolable, but at the beginning of the series it is immediately clear that someone (or something) thinks differently. All children die in a gruesome manner in a short time. How is that possible?

The Ushers are fictional, but the link with the real world that director and screenwriter Mike Flanagan makes is clear. He was inspired by the real Sackler family and the way they scandalously amassed a fortune with the painkiller OxyContin. Several series have been published about this in recent years, including: Dopesick on Disney+ and Painkiller on Netflix. So that story is told clearly and in various forms. Flanagan, who previously scored hits on Netflix with, among others The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, uses his antipathy toward the Sacklers as a jumping-off point to make a broader point about capitalism, greed, the delusions of the super-rich, and the way an older generation is failing a younger generation. He does all this in a somewhat ridiculous, but very tasty way.

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Edgar Allan Poe

The work of writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is a common thread throughout the season. The series title and episode titles are references to Poe’s work, from the short story The Masque of the Red Death to the poem TheRavens. Most of the character names also come from Poe, including prosecutor C. Auguste Dupin (a detective in Poe’s stories).

Flanagan puts his now well-known, stylish horror sauce on all of this. As with his previous series, there is a constant spooky atmosphere in the air and the underlying mystery, supernatural or otherwise, is slowly revealed. At the beginning we already know that the six heirs, who were conceived by five different mothers, have died. Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) then decides to talk to Dupin (Carl Lumbly) about his life, his business and the horrific ‘accidents’ that took place. Flashbacks go back some forty years, to the time when Roderick and his sister Madeline laid the foundation for their business success.

Each episode also shows the developments that lead to the bloody death of each child. Here the series features creative death scenes that often contain a touch of dark humor. Especially the son who has to deal with a possibly demonic cat meets a slapstick-like demise.

Carla Gugino as Verna in the series The Fall of the House of Usher.

All children tried to prove themselves during their lives, inside and outside their father’s company. Of course that brings pressure, but it also makes them all very annoying and completely unsympathetic. The comparison with the masterful Succession, about the succession struggle at a major American media company, is therefore an obvious choice. Of all the characters, daughter Camille, the head of Fortuna’s PR department, comes closest Succession-feeling. She makes nasty comments while devising media tricks to portray the company in a better light, even if a brother has already passed away.

But: the characters Succession are better and funnier than those in The Fall of the House of Usher. There you secretly grew to love the bad guys, but that is not the case here. That is the only real downside, because there is a lot to enjoy, also in terms of acting.

Bruce Greenwood as Roderick Usher in the series The Fall of the House of Usher.

Unscrupulous lawyer

Many of the cast members are regulars in Flanagan’s productions and they therefore know how to handle the dark tone that sometimes borders on ridiculous. Carla Gugino, for example, impresses as a mysterious woman who seems to appear everywhere to point out characters’ shortcomings. Also Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker in the Star Warsfilms, but virtually unrecognizable here) gets his moment with the role of Arthur Pym, lawyer and fixer of the Ushers. Pym always wears leather gloves, has a voice like sandpaper and seems in no way affected by all the madness around him. The series does not have a clearer symbol for the unscrupulous side of capitalism.

During a conversation with Roderick Usher, prosecutor Dupin tries to characterize the lawyer: “He seems like the type of man you call if you accidentally kill a prostitute and have to cut the corpse into pieces.” Usher laughs. “No, he’s not that boring.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v73EeNFFILA