When the streaming bubble officially burst last year, Netflix made some concessions that were once unthinkable. A platform in which an ad-free experience was one of the biggest selling points began offering a cheaper, ad-supported tier; the company has also cracked down on the sacred tradition of password sharing. (The common denominator with these changes: trying to get—or keep—as many subscribers as possible.) Of course, what really matters to most consumers is what Netflix can still offer: a dizzying number of original shows and movies. Although the Netflix model favors quantity over quality, the streamer does make exceptions for high-profile showrunners, tying several of them up to exclusive deals. And that’s where Netflix’s newest crisis may lie: losing the minds behind some of the company’s buzziest original programming.
While Ryan Murphy’s departure to Disney is taking most of the headlines, Mike Flanagan’s move to Amazon’s Prime Video could cause Netflix even more headaches. Perhaps the single most industrious horror auteur of the past decade, Flanagan has been a major boon for Netflix: Since 2016, he’s been responsible for three films and five series released on the platform, all of which were well received by critics and audiences alike. (Quentin Tarantino and I are in agreement: The Haunting of Hill House is an all-timer.) Flanagan’s latest project, the eight-episode miniseries The Fall of the House of Usher, is among the best of the bunch. A sprawling tale of greed, addiction, and vengeance with some not-so-subtle allusions to the perpetrators of America’s opioid epidemic, House of Usher has the trappings of a prestige drama and the body count of a slasher flick. Somehow, that combination works like gangbusters. That House of Usher is such a strong send-off for Flanagan will be bittersweet for Netflix: a potent reminder of all the great work he’s done over the years and just how challenging it’ll be to replace him.
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Loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name—as well as other works by the legendary author—House of Usher begins as the aging CEO of a shady pharmaceutical company, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood), mourns the deaths of his six children under bizarre circumstances. In the midst of his grief, Roderick invites C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), an assistant district attorney who’s been trying to hold the Usher family accountable for decades, to his dilapidated childhood home for a long-overdue confession. From there, House of Usher weaves through various points in the Ushers’ lives, showing how Roderick (played by Zach Gilford in the earlier timeline) and his sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell in the present, Willa Fitzgerald in the past), became the heirs of the pharma empire under nefarious means and how each of Roderick’s offspring met their brutal end. Tying all of these threads together is Verna (Carla Gugino), a mysterious figure whose appearance precedes every calamity that befalls the family. Basically, imagine if a bunch of amoral 1-percenters were caught in a Final Destination death loop.
With their immense wealth, which is owed to the creation of a highly addictive opioid, the Ushers are a clear stand-in for the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma. Purdue’s reckless promotion of OxyContin has been the subject of several documentaries and docudramas—including Netflix’s own limited series Painkiller, released over the summer. But while the implications of the opioid crisis make up the show’s main hook, Flanagan argues that the Usher family is symptomatic of a larger evil that the very worst of society continues to exploit: capitalism. In House of Usher’s supernaturally inclined universe, the rich and powerful aren’t just bound together by the same tax bracket—they’ve all made a deal with the devil, swayed by greed at the expense of their souls. (Yes, there are references to Donald Trump and his shocking ascent to the White House.)
By channeling modern anxieties around capitalism through a wealthy and highly dysfunctional family, House of Usher will also inevitably draw comparisons to Succession—something that Flanagan hasn’t exactly shied away from. House of Usher’s expletive-laden dialogue can sometimes sound like it came from Succession’s cutting-room floor; the classical score is very “We have Nicholas Britell at home.” These similarities are undeniably fun, especially if you’re currently going through Succession withdrawal, but where House of Usher really soars is in showing how siblings who are vying for power (and Daddy’s attention) threaten the foundation of what the family has built—far more than outside forces ever could. Each of Roderick’s children is awful in their own unique way: The eldest failson, Frederick (Henry Thomas), is a toxic mix of entitlement and insecurity; Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan) is a self-styled wellness guru aping Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop; Victorine (T’Nia Miller) is a medical researcher willing to risk the lives of unwitting patients if it means impressing her father; Camille (Kate Siegel) is the family’s coldhearted, one-woman PR wing; Leo (Rahul Kohli) is an arrogant video game mogul in denial about his drug addiction; and Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota) is a young hedonist who wants to open a chain of nightclubs for elite clientele.
Not to put too fine a point on it: These kids suck, and House of Usher knows it. But in true Flanagan fashion, the auteur has a lot of empathy for his subjects—in many ways, the Usher children are simply by-products of their upbringings and all the privilege that entails. (Generational wealth is its own kind of sickness.) But unlike other Flanagan shows, House of Usher revels in the characters’ comeuppance. Nearly every episode is bookended by an Usher family death that would make Jigsaw blush: One person is mauled to death by a research animal, another is disintegrated by chemical burns, still another is impaled by shards of glass, and so on. Flanagan’s projects have had their fair share of gnarly moments—shout-out to Gerald’s Game’s stomach-turning degloving sequence—but never before has the filmmaker leaned in to such a sadistic streak. Nevertheless, these scenes feel appropriate for the subject matter: When the real-life perpetrators of the opioid crisis get away with nothing more than financial settlements and bankruptcy filings, it’s quite satisfying to watch their fictional counterparts get an even more severe comeuppance.
Less effective is the Poe of it all: House of Usher is effectively a hodgepodge of his work, right down to the episode titles. (It’s easy to see how Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Black Cat” inspired some of the character deaths.) Flanagan has an obvious reverence for Poe, but much as in his loose adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the author’s work is the scaffolding that holds a more original story in place. That’s all well and good, but sometimes shoehorning lines from a Poe poem into a story about the fall of a pharma empire is as awkward as it sounds. But if that’s the cost of making television in the age of reboots and repurposed IP, then the good parts of House of Usher far outweigh the moments that don’t totally click.
In any case, Flanagan is well versed in both literary adaptations and original projects: From Doctor Sleep to Midnight Mass, he’s maintained a stellar batting average. Flanagan’s greatest challenge, however, is yet to come: He’s next planning to adapt Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series for television. (While the rights to The Dark Tower are technically separate from Flanagan’s new deal with Prime Video, the streamer is the most likely destination for the series.) Considering how much of a disaster the Dark Tower film adaptation turned out to be, Flanagan’s got his work cut out for him. But even within the ever-popular King canon, The Dark Tower is the kind of ambitious series that has all the makings of a massive hit: a thrilling blend of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and Westerns. For his work on other King adaptations, Flanagan has had the author’s stamp of approval—if anyone can adapt The Dark Tower successfully, he’s as good a bet as any. It’s an exciting development for everyone, it seems, except Netflix, which will have to make do without horror’s most prolific auteur in the years to come. Losing Flanagan might not lead to a downfall as catastrophic as that of the house of Usher, but when it comes to quality television, it certainly makes Netflix’s foundations feel that much shakier.
