Review | Netflix’s “The Haunting of Bly Manor” is horrifyingly human

The sequel to “The Haunting of Hill House,” “Bly Manor” delivers a tantalizing follow-up with the mysterious tale of two orphaned children and their eccentric au pair. Photo taken from Netflix

Netflix’s 2018 horror mini-series “The Haunting of Hill House” left me wanting more. The first season combined elements of horror with incredible storytelling and character growth, centering each episode from the perspective of the family members living at Hill House. 

The second season builds on the same foundation that the first season laid out, but introduces a brand-new story with some familiar faces. “The Haunting of Bly Manor” begins in Northern California in 2007, with the narrator telling the story in retrospect from the present day. Eventually, the story shifts to Bly Manor in the U.K. as the primary focus of the second season, with the manor itself treated like a character from the show. 

“The Haunting of Bly Manor” deals primarily with evil spirits with a vengeance. But just as in the first season, ghosts portrayed in the series are far from the typical ghoulish portrayals usually peppered through horror movies, cheaply using jump scares and chase scenes. Creator Mike Flanagan treats the spirits as if they were people, because following the logic of the show, they once were. In both “hauntings,” ghosts are trapped at their respective residences, having died there themselves at some point in time. They carry unfinished business – ghosts vary from violent, like the titular “lady from the lake” of Bly Manor, to docile, like most of the ghosts seen in the background and in the corners of numerous scenes, often going unnoticed. 

The living characters are headed by an American au pair, Danielle “Dani” Clayton, who has her own share of ghost troubles before coming to Bly. Nonetheless, she joins the chef Owen, housekeeper Hannah and groundskeeper Jamie in the upkeep of the Manor. Dani’s primary responsibility is taking after two orphaned children, Flora and Miles Wingrave. 

Of course, there are lots of spooky ghost moments throughout the show, the history of the Manor is fleshed out in fascinating detail, particularly the origin of many of the ghosts and unexplained mysteries. The show does a fantastic job of hiding details within every episode that, if understood correctly, would give away major plot points (for fans of “Hill House,” think of the treehouse).

Although both the “Haunting of Hill House” and the “Haunting of Bly Manor” have the word “haunting” in their titles, it would be a mistake to consider either of them plainly ghost stories. Instead, both use the horror genre and the medium of ghosts to delve further into the inane human nature of their protagonists. In “Hill House,” the ghosts serve as a vessel for characters to become closer as a family, even after some members have left the world of living themselves. In “Bly,” the theme is very clearly love. As the story is fully explained, the motivating factor for every character is revealed as love of some kind. For the lady of the lake, it is a love she lost during her life; for the ghost that plagues Dani when she first arrives, it was the love she lost because of death and her consequential actions that center around protecting the ones she loves the most.

Thus, even though the show is packaged as a horrifying ghost story, the ghosts actually fail to be the most frightening aspect of the plot. “Haunting of Bly Manor” is ultimately a love story which, through incredible storytelling and accomplished acting, shows that the most horrifying part of human nature is love and the things we are willing to do to preserve it.