What is the scariest thing in the world? When they planned this year’s Halloween launch, Netflix must have asked themselves this question. The answer they came up with was apparently rich people. A couple of weeks ago, just before the autumn darkness got really dark and the shops were filled with plastic pumpkins, “The Fall of the House of Usher” premiered. The miniseries is a kind of horror drama series. It is about, precisely, the downsizing of the members of the wealthy Usher family. PATRIARCH: Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) is a more powerful figure in the TV series about the Usher family than in Edgar Allan Poe’s sinister short story. Photo: Eike Schroter/Netflix In this sense, “The Fall of the House of Usher” is a horror version of the stories we have loved the most in recent years, that is, the ones about how hideous the rich are. “The White Lotus” makes fun of how inedible they are on holiday, “Succession” showed how neurotically deceitful they are in the boardroom, but the effect was essentially the same. As a spectator, you can exchange glances with the others on the sofa and talk seriously about what increased differences and bottomless bank accounts do to people. At the same time that you might deep down want Harper’s (Aubrey Plaza) holiday wardrobe or Shiv Roy’s (Sarah Snook) cashmere sweaters. It is nothing new that the rich are portrayed as crooked and corrupt, in films and on TV. But what characterizes the series of recent years is that they are funny at the same time as they are the protagonists of the story. They are not distant opponents. They are the ones you follow through thick and thin. CRITICAL LOOK AT THE RICH: “The White Lotus” is one of several series that make fun of the rich, although many could imagine the wardrobe of Harper (Aubrey Plaza). Photo: Fabio Lovino/HBO And here lies some of the potential to make the stories exciting. You feel, along with the designer-clad protagonists, that they have played too high, that someone or something is coming to get them. It could be the law, or a competitor, or something worse. In both “Succession” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, it may seem that the biggest enemy is the family. Patriarch and father of six Roderick Usher (Hollywood veteran Bruce Greenwood) has joined the pharmaceutical industry on a preparation that does more harm than good. When he suspects that one of his children is cooperating with the prosecutors, who are always hot on his heels, he offers a huge reward to whoever finds out who the gossip is. The sibling must indicate the sibling. It is understood that the culprit will meet an unpleasant fate. STAR WARS: “Star Wars” legend Mark Hamill plays cunning lawyer in “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Photo: RICARDO HUBBS/NETFLIX Why is it so grateful to tell gloomy stories about the rich? For one, it stirs emotions in the spectators to see so much power and so much influence gathered in a few, well-groomed hands. In both “Succession” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” much is about the heirs. They have not worked for their money themselves, and they do not have personal characteristics that would suggest that it is a good idea for them to have such power, to put it mildly. Second, both drama and horror stories need someone to take a risk. That they do stupid, desperate things. That they expose themselves to danger. The thought of losing money and position, losing the luxurious lifestyle, may be precisely what pushes the rich kids in the direction of foolhardy action. In “Succession” humiliation awaits, in “The Fall of the House of Usher” something worse. RICH AND SAD: Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong played the grown children of media mogul Logan Roy in “Succession.” Third, stories like this can quickly turn into some sort of cosmic revenge drama. Karma is known to be an awkward woman. Both series have as their starting point that when someone is so unconsciously, demandingly rich, and that in a world that is suffering, then they have done something immoral to get there. It is implied that it is not the hunt for the silencer that is why Roderick Usher’s children start dying, it is something more mysterious. This plot is also a long way from what happens in the short story of the same name. Director and series creator Mike Flanagan likes to update the classics of the horror genre, and here he has been inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” from 1839. It offers shivers down the spine for quite different reasons. THE FATHER OF HORRORS: Edgar Allan Poe wrote his famous horror stories in the 1800s, and has been imitated by many. Photo: Ap Poe describes how an unnamed narrator arrives at a dilapidated mansion, the traditional seat of the Usher family. There he meets his old friend, Roderick Usher. He is tense and unable to live, suggesting that the house is alive and able to almost devour those who live there. He has become so sensitive that he can hardly move around, his senses are so fine-tuned that he can hardly stand the taste of ordinary food or the feeling of coarse substances against his body. Poe’s Usher family is an old, noble family with few children that has withered away. Some readers have taken a hint that it is incestuous tendencies that have led to the genus being on the brink of extinction. Netflix’s series offers a Roderick Usher who is apparently the exact opposite of his namesake in the short story: An energetic director who has dragged himself out of poverty, and who has a huge young chef who can be taken off one by one. HALLOWEEN: Halloween is big business in the United States, and President Joe Biden’s White House is also expected to be decorated. Netflix celebrates this year with the horror series “The Fall of the House of Usher”. Photo: AP Although the Poe references abound, and the series keeps returning to a conversation Roderick has with an old friend in his dilapidated childhood home, it is the differences that are most striking. In Poe’s short story, it is as if the rich are slowly annihilating themselves. In the TV series of the same name, it is as if the universe itself is reaching out to them with a bony hand.
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The scariest thing this year is the rich – Expression
