there are millions of things in The Haunting of Hill House that we can talk about for hours, it think it's one of the most beautifully crafted tv shows of our time. I recently rewatched it for a third (?) time and realized there was something that we don't really talk about because it was overshadowed by the rest of the tragedy.
abigail as a character is so interesting to me, and i found myself thinking of her way more than i expected. at first we assume is is luke's imaginary friend, a ghost on the property that he sees and has befriended. we even see a wide shot of what can only be assumed to be her playing in the yard, and yet we still assume shes some sort of apparition. the seed was planted by the other characters dismissing him. nobody ever trusts luke's word. not then, not later. but it isn't until we see her sit up in luke's bed on that night that we start to question if she's really there. this small moment of insanity and doubt. it's what hill house does to you. it makes you question yourself and your eyes. it takes everything you know and shows you that it's possible that it was never true at all. at least this was olivia's experience, and mine. even as abigail is poisoned and dying, there's a part of you that still holds onto the idea that she was already dead. that she's an apparition playing along. we don't want to belive that a living child could actually be caught in the crossfire of olivia's growing madness. but then abigail dies. she truly dies and it all settles in. that's the horror of her death. not only that she was a sweet little girl who made friends with the new owners of the house her parents work at, but that we had assumed the entire time she was in no danger. that abigail was never allowed to step foot on the property to begin with, but now she's stuck there forever.
i watched marty supreme last night and here is a list of things i can’t stop thinking about:
- the way timothée walks in character. swaying shoulders as if he’s larger than life
- the makeup for the texture of his skin
- “aren’t you going to say something to me?” “what? congratulations?”
- the amount of times marty said i love you to the people around him
- the look on dion’s face when rachel said the baby was marty’s
- how GOOD wally and marty are as a hustle team and the chemistry between timothée and tyler in general. would love to see them in another movie together
- how tragic the argument was between marty and rachel when he found out she was faking her injuries. “this is something my mother would to to me” … “then just go home.”
- where the fuck is that dog now
- the spanking scene
- i’m almost positive the baby at the end is not his. “five mizler please.” “you said four right?”
(to me) jesse plemons has an extremely off putting uncanny valley vibe to him, and as someone who loves yorgos lanthimos films it’s almost like exposure therapy to watch them and have him appear again in Bugonia after seeing Kinds of Kindness. seriously he freaks me out and even more so in Bugonia !!!!!
Teddy has a slow unmasking of his true nature, similarly to Michelle and her true nature being revealed as the movie goes on.
at first we can’t possibly take him seriously. i mean, the guy truly and deeply believes in aliens, he’s got greasy and a dirty ol’ t-shirt. his training methods look ridiculous and his cousin seems to be dragged in it because he doesn’t know any better. they’re like kids that truly believe in the wonders their imagination have conjured up.
but then he does it. he kidnaps Michelle and it’s fumbling and messy and funny. but as he keeps visiting her in the basement he gets angrier and angrier until he can’t control his outbursts anymore and you start to truly understand the danger of the situation. he’s an unwell and unstable man and he has had two violent outbursts now. he could truly hurt this woman.
he shows no mercy when he ties her down to the voltage chair and he is truly going for the kill when he lunges and crawls across the dinner table to get to her. if all this wasn’t terrifying enough, the reveal that he’d had past subjects, victims, was even more frightening. he’s unwell and so deep in his believe that everything is the fault of these aliens and he will stop at nothing until he gets his desired outcome.
i just thought it was a masterful unraveling, and casting jesse plemons really sold it for me.
but of course due to the plot of film i was very much focused on Michelle at first. is she really an alien? i loved that we were second guessing ourselves so many times through out. so many reveals so many realizations and questions and worries. their reveals were tied to one another the same way their denial of responsibility was tied to one another
i think the group in whc1 is so special to me in comparison to whc2 because the storytelling is just perfect. the use of side characters to drive the plot forward in a way that flows smoothly is amazing in a way that i thought season 2 lacked.
whc1 was our first introduction to sieun opening up to people. the tenderness of his whirlwind friendship with suho and the way he cared so so deeply for beomseok. i could go on and on about sieun and suho, how they have a particularly special bond with each other, but beomseok is very interesting to me as a character.
it was beomseok who reached out to sieun to try to “get on his good side.” and it was beomseok who reached out to suho to help sieun with yeongbin and his gang. it was that decision that truly brought the three of them together.
his growing insecurity when three became four blinded him from this. that despite what he was feeling, the other two truly did see him as a friend. the relationship there with suho is a bit complicated in my opinion, because sieun was much more observant and empathetic with beomseok, which made suho’s domineering personality seem more malicious than intended. suho had always been the person to steer people away from crossing lines. he stops fights (or finishes them) and walks around with a confidence that pisses people off and intimidates them at the same time, and to someone so insecure and so used to be walked all over like beomseok, it felt oppressive. being led to certain choices or held back, it felt like an attack on him. it must have reminded him of his father who by no doubt gave him a list of things he can and cannot do so as to not damage his reputation.
this is what makes him special in my opinion. we watch him open up to sieun and suho and then we watch him fall away from them. seeing the rise and fall and the exact reasons for it make him easy to empathize with. it makes it more understandable and you can really form the connection and ache even as he crosses line after line and begins to do things that he himself doesn’t even understand the reasons for.
all this in comparison to baekjin, one of the leading antagonists of whc2, and seongje, we don’t know what their motivations are. not really. we spend a little time with baekjin and learn his relationship to baku but we don’t get the ins and outs the same way we did with beomseok’s falling out with sieun and suho. personally i just find it easier to connect with the group from season 1 because of this, though i know it would be a bit repetitive (narratively) to tell a different story in the same manner. i felt a strange disconnect with the group in season 2, but this is probably due to my own extreme biases towards suho and the aching feeling that the first three friends gave me by the end.
i also found that the pacing in season 1 was much more tense and faster than it was in season 2, which is most favorable to me. high tension and emotional ups and downs really made it an experience i’ll be chasing for a long time, while season 2 slowed down a lot more. i assume this was a narrative choice considering the emotional state sieun was in, and how he attempted to close himself off from other people more than before, but it fell a bit flat for me after especially after just coming down from the rollercoaster that was season 1. the threats also felt less serious to me than before. in season 1 there was an easy and smooth rise in the intensity of the violence. starting with school bullies, and then the bullies connections to a gang, and then the gang leader getting involved. and once we settle that you calm down a bit and then we get beomseok’s plot line. i thought it flowed very smoothly and though a bit ridiculous for a high school setting, it worked. in season 2 i honestly just could not take the Union that seriously, and the flow of the story was incomparable to season 1 which was just perfect.
i know sieun and suho are fan favorites, and beomseok gets people very passionate (in a good way and in a bad) but i don’t know if any of this is an unpopular opinion? i rambled a bit at the end but ive been collecting these thoughts for a while now. i think one day i will rewatch class 2 without my suho biases and digest it in a different way that before but for now i have an obvious favorite friend group
there are countless interactions between sieun and suho that make me lose my head but most in particular it’s after their fight with gilsu. “why would you go after him alone?” “you came, didn’t you?”
he’s exhausted from the fight so the cadence of his voice is drawn out and breathy. it’s an excuse, really. don’t scold me because i wasn’t actually alone. but it’s also an explanation. as if he knew suho would follow behind. and suho’s response is even worse. he scoffs a bit as if he can’t believe this guy. he’s crazy. is he insane because he’s right? that he knew suho would follow? is he insane because there was no guarantee that suho would follow despite sieun’s assumption? is he insane because his excuse was so dismissive, as if suho being there made everything—his reckless behavior—alright in the end?
the new frankenstein movie peeled my skin back, looked at all my gory, horrible inadequacies and said "i understand you" and now i need to go curl up and die. everyone go watch it right now.
it was a mistake to mindlessly throw on weak hero one day just to pass the time because i didn’t know it would slowly infest my brain and linger around for days after i’ve finished it…
the part that stuck with me the most was the way that sieun and suho are so tender with each other. i tried to move on, start watching any other drama available, but i found myself searching for shse in everyone. it’s not often that you see the ‘Best Friends’ duo in an action series centered around loyalty and fighting be so tender with each other despite the violence all around them. despite the violence they themselves have participated in. usually it’s all buddy buddy. arm punches and boyish behavior. sieun snd suho are different. i think that’s what makes them special. they openly care about each other in a way that is so loud that the people around them start to fear the other.
along with the hurricane that is their collision of loyal feelings, their willingness to knowingly cross lines for each other and only each other, it’s the small things that stick with me. suho’s arm around sieun’s shoulder, feeding him food from his hand, tucking sieun’s chin himself while teaching him to fight. he doesn’t hesitate to reach out, and when he does, it’s with a delicacy. something so different from the way he mercilessly breaks bones and throws punches against the people that have hurt sieun.
even the way they talk to each other. instantly familiar and playful. god and don’t even get me started on sieun’s eyes.
what's that one thing where they asked how ripely from alien was so realistic and believable as a female character in scifi for once and they were like "well we just took the dude from the original script and made him a girl and changed nothing else. it works bc men and women are the same?" and people were like "woah no way" and then didn't learn anything from that for 20 years
"how do you write such believable men as a woman?" "how do you write such believable women a man?" and the answer people who are good at it always give is "i just write people. were literally the exactly the same. do you think the opposite sex is some sorta totally different animal???" and people respond "woah that's wild. yea i do. and im not gonna stop thinking that goodbye :)"
My favourite story type is groups of terrible, horrific people are visited by an otherworldly being that presents themselves as a human, trying to intervene or punish said terrible people by torturing them psychologically until they kinda take themselves out
I saw the tv glow makes me mourn for everyone who felt like there wasn’t enough time. Everyone who thought their time was up and they just had to stay how they were. They had to stay dying.
- Wayne has a green thumb. He reads Gardener’s Weekly magazine. It doesn’t say what he grows, but it says he buys vegetables from the store so I’m going to say that gruff old man Wayne has the prettiest petunias in the whole trailer park.
- Eddie sneaks into the Hawk with his best friend Ronnie to watch action movies and thinks Snake Plissken, Han Solo and Conan the Barbarian are cool.
- Eddie talks for hours about the intricacies of Elven politics in Tolkien.
- Eddie read comics as a kid and hid them all over the house "like a little squirrel" under the bed, behind the nightstand, under the rug. Wayne found his Uncanny X-Men in the freezer between stacks of tv dinners. Also, "Hellfire Club" comes from these X-Men comics.
- Floor time! There's a part where Eddie is literally just lying on his back on his bedroom floor counting down from a million. When Wayne comes home, Eddie army crawls on his belly to the doorway to see him.
- Eddie reads Gormenghast paperbacks, gothic fantasy novels. It mentions that Wayne saved them from the house fire along with Eddie’s guitar. It never says how/when Eddie originally got his guitar.
- Eddie says lots of cc’s original songs have D&D references. It's implied that he writes them. One is called “Fire Shroud” after a spell
- Eddie is called Freak King at school and Munson Junior or just Junior around town and he hates all of it
- Eddie talks about having anxiety a lot and it's implied he has had panic attacks in the past
- Eddie is the lead singer and guitarist of cc. He started the band with Ronnie specifically because it was required to participate in the school talent show.
- Neither Wayne or Al graduated high school. When Eddie (temporarily) drops out, Al celebrates.
- Eddie doesn't cook. He doesn't even own a spatula. The smell of cooking in their house actually shocks him and gives him a deep longing for family meals, which Al uses to manipulate him
- Eddie jokes about being into Saturday Night Fever and strikes the pose a couple times.
- Eddie knows how to hotwire and how to pick locks. Al taught him this at the age of ten. Eddie is "disgusted" with himself any time he does either of those things.
- Eddie "drives like a monster" when he's upset about something.
- Eddie smokes cigarettes occasionally. Weed is mentioned a lot in the book but it never says anything about Eddie smoking it or doing any drugs. He either doesn't smoke much or he hasn't tried anything yet in the book. Also, he’s just now meeting Rick. But It’s pretty clear after everything he went through why he would start
- There's lots of mentions of PBR and Bud Light. Though Eddie says he doesn't like to drink after his shifts at the Hideout (where he's a barback). He mostly drinks off-brand Big Buy soda in the book (he calls it "pop")
- Eddie's parents were married on March 12th, 1966. The date is inscribed on the bottle of their wedding wine. Eddie asks what kind it is and Al says they only had 'red or white' kind of money
- Al breaks out the wedding wine (to manipulate Eddie, you guessed it) it's red wine and Eddie really, really likes it
- Eddie went to War Zone with his dad for supplies for the truck heist (spike strips, coveralls, etc)
- Eddie's band played Exciter by Judas Priest at the talent show. The song was only approved because they emphasized the "priest"
- There was another (?) talent show in Winter of 1981 where Eddie's band played "Prowler" and they were kicked off stage halfway through because the song was considered Satanic, and the PTA visited all their parents for trying to convert everyone to Satanism.
- Eddie imagines hitting his dad twice. Once with a glass bottle and once with a metal wrench. (He should've- oops who said that)
- The only hug Eddie gets in the book is when his dad first comes back, Eddie knows it's the first step in his cycle of showing up, using Eddie and leaving, but Eddie still accepts the hug and feels guilty for enjoying it.
- It's implied Eddie gets close to tears a couple times in the book, but the only time they actually spring up is when his mom's favorite song (from Muddy Waters) comes on in the truck radio while Eddie is doing the heist with his dad and feeling awful about it. Eddie has several flashbacks of dancing with her to this song, it seems like his happiest memory that he always returns to.
- Whenever Eddie is doing what his dad wants (hotwiring, charming a person into their plans) he puts on what he calls his "best Al Munson smile" and he's terrified that it will eventually take over his whole face. There's a part at the end where Eddie is sitting in a jail cell and says "All I want to do is tear my face off. If a new one grows in it's place, maybe it'll make me a different person. Someone who isn't such a complete fuckup."
- Eddie is a barback at the Hideout (rundown bar) where his band plays sometimes. He doesn’t sell drugs until the end. At 18, he moves in permanently with Wayne and starts dealing to help with the bills.
- Lots of people in town call Eddie “Junior” for his likeness to his dad and he hates this. He calls himself Junior condescendingly when he’s doing something that lives up to his dad’s criminal reputation.
- Steddie writers, when Wayne is conveniently absent from the trailer, he’s not always at work. He goes to a bar called the Attic on Fridays with guys that Eddie considers nice and upstanding.
- Eddie lives alone in his dad's house, but throughout his life, he’d stay with Wayne when Al disappeared. The first time, Eddie was 8, he fell asleep by the window waiting while he was left for days with little food until Wayne got him. At the start of the book, Eddie’s 18 and has been there alone for months. Wayne checks on him and brings him food. But Eddie is stubbornly independent, since 3rd grade he thought he could take care of himself.
- Eddie likes metal, but also rock, Chicago blues, country and bluegrass bc of his mom. His dad taught him guitar, but he learned to love music through his mom (Elizabeth Munson neé Franklin), who passed when he was 6. He still listens to her records, mostly Muddy Waters. He has memories standing on her feet dancing to that record. It brings him to tears once.
- Eddie’s dad Al is charismatic, Eddie calls it Munson Magic but doesn’t think he has it. “I inherited his hair, his van, and his guitar picks. But nobody’s loving Eddie Munson on sight.” Still, Eddie’s worst fear is being like his dad. Al only shows up to manipulate Eddie into helping him with schemes. Two of which get Eddie held at gunpoint twice and hit in the head with a shotgun. Al screws ppl over and gets their house burned down, with Eddie’s mom’s records.
