MovieChat Forums > The Haunting of Hill House (2018) Discussion > No idea why this has been so highly prai...

No idea why this has been so highly praised.

posted 6 years ago by RAJH (533)
17 replies | jump to latest

Maybe I am judging too soon, as I've only watched the first 3 episodes....
So far so shit lol. Sorry.
Absolutely no suspense or tension whatsoever. The musical score is dull and forgetable.
I am not seeing anything here that I haven't already seen before.
The scares are terrible. The story, so far is derivative.
The storytelling is messy and the characters are dull and uninteresting.
The 9.1 score is mindblowing to me. I am lead to believe a lot of the 10/10 reviews are from paid shills.

"One of the best tv shows ever made"
"Simply amazing!"
"Incredible" .....Which parts exactly were incredible??
"Better than any other horror film or series"
"Up there with The Exorcist" LMAO

And this is my favourite one....
"The best 10 hours of my life" Seriously?? lol FFS!
And notice the amount of reviews that say "This is my first time writing a review" or
"I just created an account to write this review" lol Yeah, I bet you did....
One person even said that they cried at the end of the episode 1 because the show was THAT good LMAO. Sure you did, buddy.

To be honest I think Mike Flanagan is a pretty shitty director.
None of his previous films are anything above average. This guy doesn't know how to build suspense at all. Just my opinion.
But considering all of his previous films have average IMDB scores and this show is clearly not any better.....I am lead to believe the rating is not legit.

EDITED

I've just finished episode 4 and I can now confirm to myself that the majority of 10/10 reviews on IMDB have to be from members of the film crew and/or their family members.

This is horse shit. If it were a film, the score would settle at around a 4.
The guy on here who stated he was "blown away" by episode 3 is a bullshitter.
Either they have very low standards or they have been paid to say that.

Fuck you, Mike Flanagan! Why don't you just accept that you ain't a very good director instead of paying people to lie about your shitty TV series. Thanks for wasting my time.

[–] StarWarsRey (566) 6 years ago

I suggest you keep watching.

[–] RAJH (533) 6 years ago

I will.

[–] winslow (1318) 6 years ago

It gets better as you go because the first 7 episodes loosely focus on each family member and give a bit of their POV. The overall story is sorta pieced together from their experiences.

[–] RAJH (533) 6 years ago

I finished episode 3 last night and I gotta be honest....I am finding it pretty terrible so far.
The scares are like something out of a goosebumps episode. TBH I should have expected that from the director of Ouija 2...
I appreciate there may be an interesting story developing but I don't know if I am gonna get much out of it if there is no suspence or any effective scenes.

Whatever happens, I can tell this show has absolutely been overpraised.
I am confident the rating will drop over time. Sorry guys.

[–] LoveCatsHateDogs (1648) 6 years ago

It's not really about the scares. The horror itself was kinda crappy and it was nothing original, it was just a well crafted, well told story. A quality product.

If you want 100% horror you should look elsewhere.

[–] RAJH (533) 6 years ago

I disagree that it was well crafted...It had decent cinematography and some good acting. That is it...
The writing, storytelling, directing, the script....All terrible.
Also some of the worst child actors ever.
The director just doesn't know horror.

[–] LoveCatsHateDogs (1648) 6 years ago

You're still three episodes in right?

Most of the good stuff is when all the stories come together near the end.

That kid with the glasses...yeah...that kid can't act. I will give you that. Even for a six year old.

The horror: refer to my previous point.

If you aren't gonna watch it until the end...that's fine. If you are...give it the full ten episodes before you write it off.

[–] RAJH (533) 6 years ago

I got to about half of episode 5 last night and I am on the verge of giving up.
No show should take that long to get good or interesting.
Can you honestly tell me that if I am finding all of the scares to be silly n ineffective so far, that anything in the later episodes is gonna change my opinion on that?
I understood your previous point but it is supposed to be a horror show at the end of the day.
I appreciate a good horror story but if all of the scares are crap then I don't know what I'll get out of it.
American Horror Story wasn't great but I was in to that within the first episode.
5 episodes in to this one which people have called a "masterpiece" and other have claimed it to be "up there with The Exorcist" ....And there has not been a single effective scene so far. Not one.

I am not gonna suggest that anyone saying they liked this show is lying and/or worked on the film.....But I am sure, without a shadow of a doubt that a large number of those 10/10 reviews on IMDB are fake.
One person said they literally cried because of how good the first episode was....There is no way this is a legit review lol.
It is overall a very poor quality TV show.
Compare this to something like this to Breaking Bad....
This is like a late night channel 5 film you stumble on, that no one has ever heard of.

[–] LoveCatsHateDogs (1648) 6 years ago

I have never given anything a 10/10 score. Nothing is perfect.

I'd give this show an 8.0 because, if they'd combined the darker, grown up stuff already present in the stories with some DECENT horror effects (like the practical effects you used to see in the earlier seasons of The Walking Dead) and better scares, it would have been almost perfect.

[–] RAJH (533) 6 years ago

If you say so, sir!

[–] BrundleFly (44) 6 years ago

I share that attitude, about no film being perfect.

I have rated 2803 movies on imdb, 3 of those i actually gave a 10.
I guess Se7en, 2001 a space odyssey and There will be blood are perfect films in my mind.

The haunting of Hill House though, is just another disappointment.

Bland, sterile, predictable and toothless.

Everyone on screen looks like a glamour model, a common problem in american network tv.
Makes you never forget this is just paid actors on a set speaking lines from a poorly written script.

Seriously, the dialog is terrible.

The script treats the audience like we are idiots, 90% of the dialog is just exposition.

The writers must have forgotten the first rule of filmmaking 101: show, don't tell, film is a visual medium.

[–] Satan2016 (23933) 6 years ago

Almost every major show/movie has the same reviews! It's as if someone wrote a Guide to Fake IMDb Reviews.

[–] winslow (1318) 6 years ago

I never really found the IMDB reviews to be very useful. Especially after they shut down the forums.

[–] RAJH (533) 6 years ago

My favourite review was titled "The best 10 hours of my life" ......No seriously.

[–] horrorfan000 (2148) 6 years ago

Well i'm 3 episodes in and i like it.I wouldn't rate it a 10 but its a good show.

[–] ColumboKate (5368) 6 years ago

Well, I haven't read the book but I've seen an old b&w film and the 90s version which I think made me like this.

It's similar enough that I already know the story but different enough to keep me watching, trying to guess where it was going.
So yes, maybe a bit over the top reviews but good story non the less.
I do wish there had been more about 'the (ghost) children' as in the films though, but maybe I need to read the book to comment properly.

[–] Melton (2675) a year ago

Same. I actually found it quite engaging as it went along, with good acting, great camerawork and just enough compelling mystery about what the hell was going on that I was really looking forward to a revelatory and satisfying ending.

Well, that never came. The ending was a sloppy mess and brought down the whole house of cards.

Midnight Mass, Flanagan’s other horror series, was better overall but even that fell apart at the end. As did Flanagan’s The Shining ‘sequel’ Dr Sleep. His fan-service Overlook finale was cheap and tacky, and killing off Danny was unnecessary and nonsensical.

Flan has real filmmaking skill but it’s all for nothing if you can’t create a satisfying ending - the most important part of any story.

What’s even more baffling is that the novels he adapts have good endings, he just decides to shred them and replace them with his vastly inferior endings.

I’ll be staying away from future Flanagan projects unless I hear he has miraculously learned how to stick the landing. 10 hours is a lot of time to waste on Lost-style rudderless nonsense.