Netflix is launching a new horror series just in time for Halloween, but this one carries with it an added dose of reality. Haunted, a new series from the executive producers who brought you The Purge and Lore, features a new horror story in each episode, but unlike other horror anthology dramas, this series is inspired by real accounts of the supernatural and bizarre in the lives of real people. In the vein of re-enactment shows you've seen countless times before, first-person accounts will be delivered, and then the production team of Haunted will re-enact those stories. Unlike a lot of those other shows, though, Haunted is trying to dial the horror factor up as high as it possibly can. Check out the first trailer. Video of Haunted | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix To further drive home the first-person potential of the series, Netflix has also devoted a Reddit thread to drawing the nightmares of real people who submit their stories, with an assortment of professional artists turning in their own interpretations. You should head over there right now if you'd like some pure nightmare fuel of your own today. And to make things even creepier, Netflix has also released official artist interpretations of the stories from each of Haunted's first six episodes. You can check those out in the gallery below. Haunted arrives Oct. 19, leaving you plenty of time to binge the whole first season before Halloween.<doc-sep>Halloween isn’t just a holiday—it’s our entire October mood. So celebrate the best time of year with a month’s worth of stories that will keep you up all night long. (Binge-watching and eating candy, probably. Same, tbh.) Cheers, witches! This post contains spoilers for The Haunting of Hill House, now streaming on Netflix. STREAM IT Ghosts in horror movies don’t usually get to me. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a scaredy cat. I’ve never read a Goosebumps book, I refuse to even look at Ouija boards, and no, I will not participate in your game of Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board, tyvm. This content is imported from {embed-name}. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Floating spectral beings just require a suspension of disbelief that I just don’t have in me. They never look real enough to truly spook me. (Same goes for demonic possessions and their subsequent exorcisms. Don’t @ me.) Steve Dietl/Netflix But the ghosts in Netflix’s new horror series The Haunting of Hill House, premiering today, will haunt me at least through Halloween. It isn’t just their scary AF hollow eyes, one ghost’s blackened, nearly unhinged mouth, or “the bent-neck woman.” It’s the pain, the loneliness, the desperation that grips their strained faces, pools in their eyes, and reaches across the screen to make you turn back on the lights. Now that, that feels real. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. The ghosts in The Haunting of Hill House will haunt me at least through Halloween. (OK, fine, it’s also the one ghostly dude who is extremely tall and wears a bowler hat and floats a few inches above the ground, somehow moving in both slow motion and fast forward. He is haunting me now, too.) The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics) penguin classics amazon.com $16.00 $11.79 (26% off) Shop Now If the name of the series sounds familiar that’s because it’s based on the similarly-titled 1959 gothic novel by Shirley Jackson about a family living in an old spooky haunted house. In Netflix’s Mike Flanagan-helmed, impeccably cast reimagining, mom (Carla Gugino) and dad (Henry Thomas, and later, Timothy Hutton) are house-flippers who think their move to this creepy-looking house is temporary until they spruce things up and sell for a profit. Spoiler: they’re wrong. The series unspools at a teasingly (and satisfyingly) gradual pace, bouncing between present-day, in which the sort of estranged Crain family patriarch and siblings (Michiel Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, and Katie Siegel) are brought back together following the youngest sister’s (Victoria Pedretti) suicide, and flashbacks to the Crain siblings as children in Hill House just before their mother’s mysterious death. This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Each scene reveals something new about the family and the tragedies that define them, sometimes revisiting a scene you’ve already watched from another character’s perspective. Oh, and did I mention the house is alive? In a sense, at least. Everything creaks or rattles, unwelcome surprises or mysteriously ominous-looking objects lurk behind every corner, and there’s always the sense that something is watching you. Be warned: the series is highly bingeable. This isn’t just a story of a haunted house though. The Haunting of Hill House is the story of a family coping with trauma and the resentments, mistakes, and betrayals that come along with it—more terrifying than bowler hat guy, tbh—and the love and bond that nonetheless holds them together, even if does so begrudgingly. As one Crain brother describes in the final episode, “ghosts are guilt, ghosts are secrets, ghosts are regrets and failings, but most times, most times, a ghost is a wish.” Consider yourself shook. And be warned: the series is highly bingeable. Each gorgeously cinematic episode (there are ten of them) clocks in at around or over an hour. So, cancel your weekend plans. This content is imported from {embed-name}. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Jen Ortiz Deputy Editor, Cosmopolitan As deputy editor, Jen oversees Cosmopolitan's daily digital editorial operations, editing and writing features, essays, news, and other content, in addition to editing the magazine's cover stories, astrology pages, and more. This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io<doc-sep>New Netflix Series 'The Haunting Of Hill House' Is Already Getting Incredible Reviews Online Picture: Netflix/Screenshot By Nicky Idika The Haunting of Hill House is headed to Netflix and critics are already raving about the new series. Netflix's new horror TV show, The Haunting of Hill House, already has a very high score on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its streaming release. Even though it officially lands on Netflix this Friday, October 12, critics seem to be loving the scary new show, giving it an aggregate rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. One critic, Christopher Lawrence of the Las Vegas Review Journal said, "The Haunting of Hill House practically oozes with gothic horror. Dread, foreboding and general creepiness lurk around every corner in ways seldom seen on television." Picture: Steve Dietl/Netflix The Haunting of Hill House is an adaptation of the 1959 Shirley Jackson gothic horror novel of the same name. It is about a family, The Crains, who move into "the most famous haunted house in America". The family has five children who are all profoundly affected by the trauma that befalls them in the home. As adults, the siblings must reunite following the suicide of the youngest sister "to finally confront the ghosts of their own pasts". Chris Evangelista of Slashfilm called The Haunting of Hill House "a frequently scary, surprisingly emotional saga". Similarly, Louisa Mellor of Den Of Geek writes "there are jump scares, and creeping moments, unnerving revelations, and a few truly horrible images. None of it though, feels gratuitous or weightless." Watch the trailer for The Haunting of Hill House below. The Haunting of Hill House stars Michael Huiseman (Game of Thrones), Elisabeth Reaser (Easy), Kate Siegel (Hush), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Emerald), and Victoria Pedretti (Once Upon A Time) as the older versions of the Crain siblings. It also stars Paxton Singleton, Lulu Wilson (Ouija: Origin of Evil), McKenna Grace (Designated Survivor), Julian Hilliard, and Violet McGraw (Ready Player One) as the younger versions of the Crain siblings. All 10 episodes of The Haunting of Hill House season 1 will drop on Netflix Friday, October 12. 24 Scary Movies And Shows To Watch On Netflix This Halloween 2018 What do you guys think? Are you excited for the psychological horror that is The Haunting of Hill House? Will you be watching?<doc-sep>Entertainment Netflix's 'Haunting of Hill House' Transforms a Classic Book into a Modern Horror Tale Steve Dietl/Netflix Filmmaker Mike Flanagan, the director, co-writer, and executive producer behind Netflix's genuinely unsettling new family horror series Haunting of Hill House, is no stranger to the art of adaptation. Last year his gripping take on Stephen King's seemingly unfilmable novel Gerald's Game terrified adventurous streaming audiences and he's currently working on a big screen version of King's 2013 novel Doctor Sleep, a sequel to the author's snowbound classic The Shining. In between those high-pressure projects, he decided to tackle a seminal work by the late Shirley Jackson, possibly the only horror writer more universally beloved than King himself. With Haunting of Hill House, which just arrived on Netflix, does Flanagan do justice to the spooky spirit of Jackson's 1959 book of the same name? At 10 episodes, including a few that (unsurprisingly for Netflix) stretch beyond the one-hour mark, the TV version of Hill House is certainly longer than the novel, which doesn't crack 300 pages and can be read in a few sittings. Obviously, girth doesn't always translate to quality -- and Flanagan has taken some significant liberties with the text, using the novel as an inspiration rather than a roadmap -- but Jackson fans should find dark pleasures in the ways the series interprets elements of the story, reconfigures certain characters, and drops sly references to the original. As one would expect from a story like this getting the prestige TV treatment, the series has a clear reverence for Jackson's work. (At one point, we see Steven, the Crain child played by Michiel Huisman, reading a copy of Jackson's short story "The Lottery," a high school English class staple.) Despite totally reimagining the story -- Hollywood did something similar with both the 1963 and 1999 movies The Haunting -- Flanagan retains the thematic core of the novel in some effective ways that we've highlighted below. Steve Dietl/Netflix The scary house is still at the center of the story. It's right there in the title: Hill House. From the creepy opening title sequence to the moving final shot of the season, the imposing structure looms large over the series. In the famous opening passage of the book, Jackson describes the house as "not sane" and clarifies that it "stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within it." On the plot level, Flanagan spends a far greater amount of time outside the house itself. (One of my criticisms of the show is that it takes a little while to get going -- it probably won't fully sink its hooks into you until episode two, at the earliest.) It's right there in the title: Hill House. From the creepy opening title sequence to the moving final shot of the season, the imposing structure looms large over the series. In the famous opening passage of the book, Jackson describes the house as "not sane" and clarifies that it "stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within it." On the plot level, Flanagan spends a far greater amount of time outside the house itself. (One of my criticisms of the show is that it takes a little while to get going -- it probably won't fully sink its hooks into you until episode two, at the earliest.) The version of the Crain family the series is built around is an invention of Flanagan's, but the names should strike book-readers as familiar. In the novel, Hugh Crain is the original builder of Hill House; here, he's played by Henry Thomas (yes, Elliott from E.T.) in the "past" sections and Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People) in the "present" sections. (The series moves back and forth between the past and the present like a spine-tingling This Is Us.) In Flanagan's version, Hugh arrives at the already built Hill House with plans to flip it with his wife Olivia (Gerald's Game star Carla Gugino) and their five adorable children as part of an ambitious summer renovation project. This being a horror show, things don't go as planned. Tina Rowden/Netflix It gives some of Jackson's prose to its writer main character. Whole paragraphs of Jackson's evocative writing get read in voice-over in the series, but in the world of the show, the punchy and carefully crafted sentences are most often attributed to the protagonist Steven Crain, who is played by Whole paragraphs of Jackson's evocative writing get read in voice-over in the series, but in the world of the show, the punchy and carefully crafted sentences are most often attributed to the protagonist Steven Crain, who is played by Game of Thrones ' Michiel Huisman in the "present." Unlike Jackson herself, he's not a novelist -- or, at least, he's not a successful one. Instead, he's carved out a career by turning his traumatic experiences as a child at Hill House into a series of slightly pulpy-looking non-fiction books about "real" examples of the supernatural. Basically, he's like a more skeptical and literary version of the guy from the TV show Ghost Adventures; in the first episode, he spends a night at a different haunted house in an effort to debunk it. Unlike some of his siblings, Steven Crain is not named after a character in the novel, but he is modeled after one of them: Dr. John Montague, a paranormal expert hoping to find evidence of the supernatural during a summer's stay at Hill House. As for the other family members, the drug addicted Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), the mentally telepathic Theodra (Kate Siegel), and the baby of the family Eleanor (Victoria Pedretti) are drawn from Jackson's creations, Steven and his funeral-home director sister Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser) are not. (You get one guess where they got the name Shirley.) A "Dr. Montague" also shows up in episode 5 as Eleanor's therapist. Tina Rowden/Netflix Like the book, the series is all about mind games. In between the occasional startling jump-scares and gruesome imagery, Haunting of Hill House series is mostly concerned with mental health, particularly the ways families can pass trauma between generations and inflict pain on one another across time. Yes, heavy stuff.<doc-sep>
Netflix's new horror series, "The Haunting of Hill House," is also a surprisingly emotional family drama, and one of Netflix's best original shows. Director Mike Flanagan ("Gerald's Game") creates a creepy mood throughout the series that leaves the viewer in suspense. The show's true horror beyond ghosts, though, comes from our real-life human fears. The show's revelations are surprising and satisfying, and will leave viewers talking. Some of the best horror movies are also engaging family dramas. A recent example is this year's "Hereditary," which director Ari Aster has described as "a family tragedy that curdles into a nightmare." Netflix's new original TV series, "The Haunting of Hill House," could also be described that way. It takes the concept and expands it over the course of 10 serialized television episodes. Not only is the show a chilling horror series, but it's also an emotional story of a family being torn apart, often by the supernatural forces at work against them, but also by their own faults. It's also one of Netflix's best original series. "The Haunting of Hill House" is loosely based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson. It follows the Crain family between their present lives and the past, when they lived in the haunted Hill house for a summer. The parents, Olivia (played by Carla Gugino) and Hugh (played by Henry Thomas in the past, and Timothy Hutton in the present) move them and their five kids to the house to flip it, but mysterious forces beyond their control upend their plan. Years later, the Crains are still haunted by their past, even though they don't want to admit it, and spread out between the east and west coasts. The oldest, Steven (Michiel Huisman), is a horror author. His sister, Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser), who is a funeral director, condemns Steven for using their family trauma to sell books, and urges their siblings not to take his royalty checks. Theo (Kate Siegel, who is the standout performer) is living in Shirley's guest house and is a child psychiatrist with a mysterious gift that requires her to wear gloves at all times. The youngest, twins Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Nell (Victoria Pedretti), have a mental connection with one another, but Luke is a drug addict and Nell is still fixated on her time in the house thanks to a recent tragedy. The show flashes between the present and past, and most episodes focus on a particular family member. But it always feels integral to the story, and never like a gimmick. By the end, every plot thread is addressed in a satisfying, and shocking, conclusion. As a horror series, the show raises the bar for any future shows in the genre. There's your typical jump scares, but the true horror in the show plays out in more subtle, chilling ways thanks to director Mike Flanagan, who has made a name for himself as a horror director in recent years with "Oculus," "Hush," "Before I Wake," "Ouija: Origin of Evil," and "Gerald's Game." He's also attached to direct the "Shining" sequel, "Doctor Sleep." Flanagan sets an eerie mood throughout the show in which the viewer is kept in suspense. But it's not just ghosts that make the show scary. Like any good piece of horror, "The Haunting of Hill House" exploits our most common human fears: death of a loved one, addiction, betrayal, etc. And it does so in surprisingly emotional ways. It's tough to go into too much detail about the show without diving into spoilers. Some of the best parts involve revelations I didn't see coming. That's why, though, that this is going to be a massive hit that people will be talking about, and not just because it makes for a perfect Halloween binge. "The Haunting of Hill House" is available on Netflix starting Friday. Watch the trailer below: