Friday, October 09, 2020

Not Going to be "Haunted"

Netflix has a new series available, The Haunting of Bly Manor.  That name should ring a bell: Bly is the site of Henry James's story The Turn of the Screw and Benjamin Britten's great opera of the same name.

From the trailer, it looks as though this film is a flat-out horror movie, a description that suits neither the James nor the Britten. The James is extremely subtle; you can hardly tell what's real. When I read it a few years ago, it seemed as though there was a single clarifying sentence about the events in the story. The Britten is more explicit, and terrifying in its own way, but the chills are musical and psychological.

Horror stories they're not. I expect to stay away from Bly Manor.

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