Haunting of Bly Manor review

By Alice O’Donnell

Tis the spooky season. Pumpkins in every shop, shelves groaning under the weight of ‘Funsized’ sweet mixes, those weird jelly stickers on windows. It’s official.

And with the spooky season comes the need to get spooked. Luckily, the recently released Haunting of Bly Manor, on Netflix, has you covered.

Loosely based off the gothic novel, ‘Turn of the Screw’ by Henry James, the show follows Dani, a young, bright-eyed American running away from a tragic past, who gets a job as an au pair looking after two orphans. She arrives at their large mansion called (you guessed it) Bly Manor, where immediately she, along with the viewer, gets thrown into a wild world of creepy kids, odd dolls, and suspicious housekeepers.

Despite keeping a fair amount of its cast, this season was very different to its predecessor ‘Haunting of Hill House’. I’m not the biggest horror fan, so I actually enjoyed this season a lot more. There were less jump-scares, and it seemed to move away from the classic horror genre. Instead, the scariest moments were drawn out, disturbing the viewers rather than shocking them.

Of course, it kept the fan favourite element of ghosts in background shots. There were also wonderfully delicate references to the Haunting of Hill House, such as the quote; “People are like locked rooms…

By Donagh Broderick

Can we colonise blackholes? Are machine rebellions something to worry about? What might alien civilisations look like? These and many other questions and topics can be explored on the YouTube channel ‘Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur’.

Hosted by the titular Isaac, a former soldier, as well a physicist, he started making videos in 2014, with the episode ‘megastructures’.

Isaac discusses a plethora of topics related to futurism, space colonisation, and answers to the fermi paradox on the channel. A key feature of these topics that Isaac discusses is usually their scale. Matryoshka brains, ringworlds, Dyson swarms, and galactic colonization aren’t exactly small things and as Isaac will often suggest, you might want to grab a drink and a snack before settling in as the average video will run in excess of 20 minutes.

When discussing each topic, Isaac looks at things from the assumption that we are operating with no new physics defying technologies (aside from episodes such as ‘Clarktech’ where such technologies like artificial gravity are the whole point of the discussion) and explores how a future of humanity or advanced civilization might behave or operate with such things in a very grounded manner which really drives home the wonders a future humanity may be capable of.

Isaac will often work in examples of pop culture and sci-fi that have featured the topic in question. As the viewer quickly learns, sci-fi authors have a very poor sense of scale as most of what they envision is too small, or that many of the tropes we commonly accept from sci-fi, such as the Prime Directive from Star Trek, do not make sense when analysed to the extent that Isaac goes for.

Now of course it may seem that such videos can get technical and luckily Isaac, in the spirit of science communicators everywhere, is aware of the need to ensure he doesn’t get lost spouting terms that few outside his field understand. Minus a handful of episodes looking at things such as antimatter factories or graphene, there is not much You’ve got to guess the shape of their key” alluding to the Red Room in Hill House, as well as references to the “Forever Home.” My favourite connection was with Nell’s line, about love and how the “rest is just confetti”, a sentiment that is never quite echoed in Bly Manor, but hinted at repeatedly. The references between the two seasons are subtle and are more like watery reflections rather than identical images.

While the previous show focused on the haunting of the actual house, this season felt like there was more an emphasis placed on the haunting of the people. What I felt Hill House missed out on, Bly Manor expanded on to great effect. The best moment of both seasons combined was, for me, when the reason of Bly Manor’s hauntings gets explained, humanising the ghosts and the reasoning behind their hauntings. If Hill House was a scary horror, then Bly Manor is a gothic romance.

There’s also a wonderful play on the concept of dreams. The line (also featured in the trailer) “It’s going to sound strange but… I’m having someone else’s dream” really summarises this theme. I was reminded strongly of the film Inception in parts, which I really enjoyed.

While the heart of the Haunting of Hill House was about family, the heart of Haunting of Bly Manor is something more complex entrapment. Owen, the manor’s chef, summarises it well in one of the first conversations

YouTube recommendation

he and Dani have – “I’ve actually never liked Bly. The complex jargon to understand and when there is Isaac clearly explains it.

However, viewers may find themselves steering clear of any episodes older than four years. Isaac suffers from a speech impediment with his r’s, which he often jokingly claims make him sound like Elmer Fudd. This combined with inferior recording equipment used in those first episodes (which were also before Isaac had begun taking elocution lessons) means these videos can be difficult to follow. However, all of them do have captions so if the topic really intrigues you then you can still learn about it easily.

A key feature of these topics that Isaac discusses is usually their scale. Matryoshka brains, ringworlds, Dyson swarms, and galactic colonization... you might want to grab a drink and a snack before settling in.

Every monthly Isaac hosts a livestream Q&A where he takes questions from his subscribers and can demonstrate in full that even unscripted, his command of the subject matters he makes videos about is seemingly endless. Whether you are a writer of science fiction looking to dust off the outdated clichés from your work, someone studying science intrigued by its applications for our future, or simply curious about the wonders our future may hold then you should definitely check out Isaac Arthur. people here, most of them, they’re born here, they die here. This whole town is one big gravity well. And it’s easy to get stuck.”

Each character in the season has their own ‘gravity well’something that traps them and refuses to allow them to leave Bly. They are all haunted, in their own way. For some, such as Owen, it’s a relatively simple case of having to leave the wonders of France to care for an aging mother. However, others have far more complex reasons, equally as fascinating as they are tragic.

I really enjoyed The Haunting of Bly Manor, and found it a far more complex and touching watch than Haunting of Hill House. If nothing else, it definitely puts you in the spooky spirit, with ghosts and ghouls abound. If you find yourself somewhat bored one evening, I’d recommend you give it a watch (unless you’re home alone, then maybe wait until morning to start it).

EVENT Crew