The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) – M. Flanagan

I haven’t read The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, 1898) in a long time -- but I have watched Jack Clayton’s excellent film of it (The Innocents, 1961) many more times. This mini-series sequel to the 2019 mini-series The Haunting of Hill House (both developed by horror afficionado Mike Flanagan) takes the James story as its starting point (and includes many of the actors, playing different characters, from the first series).  Of course, it is hard not to compare this version to the earlier version – but soon it is clear that the ambiguity of the novella and the other film would be left in the dust. Here, the spirits are real.  But also not exactly scary.  Instead of the governess (or au pair; Victoria Pedretti) being more or less alone in her struggle against (imagined or real) ghosts, here we have an array of other characters living or working at the old manor. Together they discover the mystery of the children’s strange behaviour and together they wrestle with the implications.  I won’t say more other than that what at first seemed an expansion on the original story, bringing it up to modern times and embellishing the backstories of all the characters (and added characters), quickly turned into something else, something very convoluted, possibly a merger with other ghost stories by Henry James (which I have not read). Unfortunately, this caused the mini-series to tank.  Worse, the final two episodes seem disjointed from the rest, with explanations coming out of nowhere and loose ends being gathered together to try to give every character a final resting place (the framing story that winks at us in closing is simply awful). That said, some of the actors did manage to create people that felt real and charismatic.  But I would save your 9 hours for something else.