When Netflix announced that they would be adapting Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House with Mike Flanagan of Hush and Gerald's Game on board to write and direct, we knew we were in for a chilling experience. Now, with the first full trailer before us, we have a sense of what this spooky union looks like—and it looks terrifying.
The Haunting of Hill House, unlike previous film adaptations, will be a series. The first season contains 10 episodes and its impressive cast includes Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Lulu Wilson, and Michiel Huisman. Billed as a reimagining of Jackson's supernatural horror novel, the series focuses on a family living in what will become the most haunted house in America. Its narrative flips between the past and the present as the family grapples with the many ghosts that haunt them.
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The utterly creepy trailer features Carla Gugino’s young children asking her if she would wake them from an increasingly elaborate nightmare–while making it clear that more terror lurks in their futures.
To some extent, it’s unclear how loose Netflix's reimagining of The Haunting of Hill House will be. Jackson's novel, after all, focuses on a paranormal investigator inviting guests into Hill House in hopes of capturing evidence of the supernatural. Our money is on an origin story, with the first season exploring Hill House's eerie transformation into the creaky, creepy mansion featured in Jackson's narrative. If this means that a second season is in the works, Netflix will certainly have some happy horror fans on their hands.
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Whatever threads from Shirley Jackson’s horror novel appear in this upcoming adaptation, we’ll follow Mike Flanagan pretty much anywhere. The filmmaker has a number of horror hits on his resume—Gerald’s Game, Before I Wake, Hush, just to name a few. And since a Doctor Sleep adaptation is also on his to-do list, we suspect Flanagan will be haunting our dreams for some time to come.
Check out the eerie trailer for The Haunting of Hill House below.
The Haunting of Hill House will debut on Netflix on October 12.
Featured still from 'The Haunting of Hill House' via Amblin Television
