Writer and director Mike Flanagan returns with another gothic ghost story, and I swear it looks a lot like Hill House. I’m not just talking about the sets and the scenery either; I mean even some of the actors are back as well. Different characters of course but the same actors, nonetheless. Bly Manor is based on many of the works of Henry James but mostly it is a new interpretation of his late 1800’s novella The Turn of the Screw. Each episode is named after another work by James and incorporates some of each work in the expanded tale that Flanagan weaves for us.
Starring is Victoria Pedretti (Nell Cain in Hill House; she also is in Shirley which is about writer Shirley Jackson who wrote The Haunting of Hill House proving that life is certainly cyclical) as Dani Clayton who is hired to be a nanny (or au pair if you must) for the Wingrave children. Dani takes the job and moves to England from the U.S. after some traumatic happenings occur in her life. Starring as Peter Quint, the executive assistant to Henry Wingrave (the man who hired Dani) is Oliver Jackson-Cohen (who played Luke Cain in Hell House; he also starred in The Invisible Man) as much as I loved him in Hill House, I quickly learned to dislike him here.
Speaking of Henry Wingrave, the man who hires Dani to take care of his niece and nephew, he is played by Henry Thomas. He also starred in Hill House as Hugh Crain but if you don’t know him from that you certainly remember him as young Elliot from E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. Starring as Jaime Taylor, the resident gardener at Bly Manor, is Amelia Eve. Eve has also appeared in The Blind and Big Boys Don’t Cry. Carla Gugino is the mysterious woman telling the story (the entire series is a flashback to the late 1980’s) to others (not The Others, that’s a film with Nicole Kidman that may also be based on The Turn of the Screw; cyclical, like I said before) while they are all attending a wedding.
Also starring as Hannah Grose, the housekeeper of Bly Manor who is very protective of the house as well as the children, is T’Nia Miller. Miller has also starred in The Fall of the House of Usher (also by Flanagan) and Stud Life. Bly Manor comes complete with a cook named Owen who is portrayed by Rahul Kohli. Kohli also stars in The Fall of the House of Usher and Midnight Mass, which is also by Flanagan. Owen comes and goes from Bly Manor as he has a sick mother that he also takes care of.
In some flashbacks inside of the flashback we also meet Rebecca, who was the nanny before Dani arrives. Rebecca, played by Tahirah Sharif who has also starred in Escape the Field and The Tower, is also the love interest of Peter Quint. Now let’s talk about the rugrats. Not the cartoon (which Flanagan has had nothing to do with) but rather the children of Bly Manor. The elder child, Miles (played by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth who was the voice of Pinocchio in the ’22 film and starred in All Fun and Games) is a little weirdo who has lived his entire life at Bly Manor. That is except for a short while when he was attending a boarding school from which he was recently expelled. His younger sister Flora, who is even weirder is portrayed by Amelia Bea Smith (what is it with kids these days in Hollywood with their three names; douchey), has also appeared in Anatomy of a Scandal and has given voice to Peppa Pig for over five years. Flora has a huge doll house that is a complete copy of Bly Manor. She also likes to make little poppets of the residents of Bly Manor. She’s a little corn dolly making freak!
Now when I say Bly Manor looks like it was filmed on sets used in Hill House, I mean it. The entryway/foyer looks like the same exact set piece. Oh, and before I forget, other than the actors from Hill House that I’ve already mentioned, Kate Siegel (also Flanagan’s wife) makes a cameo as well playing Viola Willoughby who was the original owner of Bly Manor a few hundred years ago.
Once again Flanagan has knocked it out of the park and while a very different type of ghost story it is still a very well-executed one. Not as good as Hill House, which is nearly perfect; Bly Manor is just a small step down in quality. It might be because all the stories of Henry James used here are not necessarily meant to be fused together and some of the seams do show at times. However, that is not to say this isn’t worthwhile. It is. In fact, if you watch the first episode and enjoy that it only gets better from there. I would call this a slow burn with lots of odd things happening in the beginning with the payoff coming later. But come it does and some of the revelations not only took my breath away but also broke my heart.
Both child actors are annoying, as I have pointed out, but they are supposed to be. They are the center of the hurricane that while none of it may be their doing, it is all being done because of them. While a ghost story, Bly Manor is also a love story. Perhaps not one that you would necessarily want to be in but a love story, nonetheless. A love story that the results of ripple through time and affect many lives throughout several generations. Bly Manor was originally to be the second season of Hill House but thankfully Flanagan talked Netflix into allowing him to do a different tale. I called Hill House nearly perfect and gave it four and a half out of five but here I will go three and a half bonfires out of four. It’s really three- and three-quarter stars but Letterbox’d doesn’t deal in quarter stars, so we adapt.
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