The Umbrella Academy and The Haunting of Hill House: Broken Families and How to Write Them
Y’all best buckle up because I’m about to do a comparative analysis between two works where one did the ‘estranged family brought together by tragedy’ trope right and the other did it wrong. (Disclaimer: this is my opinion. I don’t judge if you disagree.)
The two pieces I’m comparing?
Yes. These ones. Remember The Umbrella Academy and The Haunting of Hill House? Of course you do, because one is hilarious and the other is terrifying.
Now, cool fun fact: these shows, despite being two completely separate genres, have a lot in common. They’re both produced by Netflix, and they both surround a broken family that splintered over trauma in their childhood and then are forced back together to attend the funeral of one of their own. Their families consist of one addict who sees dead people (Luke and Klaus), one person who published a book about their troubles (Steven and Vanya), one person who’s closed off and deals with their trauma by fighting crime with their powers (Theo and Diego), one control freak that tries to command what all the other siblings do despite not having the authority (Shirley and Luther), and one person who is deeply troubled by fantastical things that have to do with their family and who runs head-first into it alone to everyone’s detriment (Nell and Five). (Also, we have one left over, which is Allison. I think her marriage issues plus her fame can slide her into Steven’s category with Vanya. Poor Ben is the Abigail of TUA’s story and barely figures until the end.) Plus, one dead parent who is the source of their trauma and one mentally absentee parental figure that loves them but can’t be there for them.
On top of this, they both use the same set. Yep! Hill House and Umbrella Academy are the same place. I guess Hargreeves chased the ghosts out with a stick because the real estate was so good. You can have a giggle about it on your next rewatch.
So you see that these are very similar stories at their core. One has ghosts and the other has time travel, but they both have the same character types with the same relationships set up. But there was a fundamental difference between the two: in HoHH, the family made the emotional core of the series, and in TUA, the family felt like a bunch of adults at their high school reunion. So why is it that the family in Haunting felt so real, and the family in The Umbrella Academy rang so hollow?
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