Change Your Image
katshaped
Reviews
Midnight Mass (2021)
Blew my mind
Perhaps I should give it ten. This show is wild. I had no idea what I was getting into when I started it. Thought it was a cute story about some people on an island. Lol. I'm not into horror (um, I think), but I love good sci-fi, and this show does some of the same things that really good sci-fi can do - it stretches your imagination far and makes you think, for a long time after the show has ended, about central aspects of human nature. It will also terrify you and glue you to the screen. And perhaps make you weep. I'm impressed.
The Haunting of Hill House (2018)
Definitely not scary if that's what you're looking for
I'm almost ashamed to have watched this. I guess it was a case of having started and then not wanting that time to be entirely lost. Also, it's not unwatchable. It's just.. really not very good.
Now, I will say that I'm not into horror i general. I accidentally stumbled upon Midnight Mass and started watching with no idea of what I was getting myself into. I just liked the characters and the scenery. But, oh boy, did I get something else. It totally blew my mind. It was like nothing I'd watched before. It was exciting and scary, and it tickled and stretched my imagination. But it was also intelligent, philosophical and important. I was hooked.
So, having watched that, I looked up Mike Flanagan, and that's how I got to Hill House. Unfortunately, Hill House is a different can of beans entirely. I guess it doesn't help that I don't believe in ghosts in the first place. But, even so, I can't believe how these particular ghosts could scare anyone. The whole thing is neither scary nor surprising nor inspiring. It's watchable.. if you're really, really bored.
When They See Us: Part One (2019)
I want to give it 10 stars, BUT....
I agree with what everyone else is saying. I also had to press pause several times because it was so hard to watch. Your heart bleeds for those kids, and you feel so incredibly frustrated and angry because you know that this is just ONE example of something that keeps happening over and over, i.e. Racial profiling.
BUT - I was also really shocked by the portrayal of Linda Fairstein. She is made out to be a complete monster. In fact, she comes across as so evil, it's almost a caricature. Now, having watched The Preppy Murder (documentary on Netflix) with/about Linda Fairstein, this portrayal of her is hard to believe. I can't help feeling angry on her behalf. Even if she made some horrible mistakes, there's no way I can believe that she acted with such malicious intent, framing the boys whilst knowing full well that they were innocent. To portray her like the embodiment of evil OBVIOUSLY makes for much 'better' television. But perhaps it's also misleading to tell the story like this. We get the impression that all of these terrible things happened, essentially, because of one horrible person. Which, in a way, is more 'comforting' than saying that this happened as a result of widespread, ingrained, perhaps also subliminal, prejudice and human error (because if that was the case, then, even in the absence of Linda Fairstein, this could happen again). I've given it 8, but I'm actually torn between 10 and 0. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe she IS a monster. I just don't think so.