Creator Of ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ Says ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ Is Going To Be ‘A Lot More Frightening’

Netflix

When The Haunting of Hill House first appeared on Netflix (you remember Netflix, right?) it became an immediate hit receiving a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes when it debuted.

That success was due in large part to the fact that The Haunting of Hill House was so scary it caused viewers of the series to have anxiety attacks, lose sleep and “terror vomit.”

With at least 43 ghosts patrolling the house, there was much for viewers to digest and theorize about.

Recently, the creator of the series Mike Flanagan says the follow-up to the Netflix horror series, The Haunting of Bly Manor, set for release sometime in 2020, will somehow be “a lot more frightening.”

So what exactly is the next level of being scared beyond “terror vomiting?”

“It’s scarier,” Flanagan told Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a lot more frightening, just on a visceral level.”

Flanagan, the director of Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game, and Ouija: Origin of Evil, added, “It’s going great. We’re about a third of the way through. It’s such a treat to play in the world of Henry James. It’s a whole different vibe from Shirley Jackson [the author of the book The Haunting of Hill House]. Turn of the Screw is kind of the backbone of the season. But that’s been adapted so many times, and so well, like in the case of the The Innocents and others. There’s a new adaptation coming out in like a few weeks. You can skip rocks off of The Turn of the Screw. So, we were able to open up his entire library of ghost stories, stuff that’s never been adapted, and build the whole season out with the entirety of Henry James’ supernatural library. And that has been a real treat, because we really get to do things that I’ve never gotten to see before. Turn of the Screw is really just our way in.”

The book’s Amazon description…

A young governess is employed to look after two orphaned children in a grand country house. Isolated and inexperienced, she is at first charmed by her young charges but gradually she suspects that they may not be as innocent as they seem. And do the sinister figures that she sees at the window exist only in her imagination or are they ghosts intent on a terrible and devastating task? The Turn of the Screw is one of the most famous and eerily equivocal ghost stories ever written.

That certainly does sound sufficiently creepy.

Flanagan also revealed that, much like what occurs on American Horror Story, some of The Haunting of Hill House cast members will also make appearances in The Haunting of Bly Manor.

Victoria Pedretti (Nell Vance), Henry Thomas (Hugh Crain), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Luke Crain), Kate Siegel (Theo Crain), and Catherine Parker (Poppy Hill) have all be confirmed to return in new roles.

Additional cast for Bly Manor will include Rahul Kohli, T’nia Miller, Amelia Eve, Ben Ainsworth, and Amelie Smith.

“There’s not a narrative connection, but there are little Easter eggs, for sure, not only in small details but in moments of dialogue and in some of the ideas from Hill House,” Flanagan said about whether Bly Manor will tie-in to Hill House in any way. “There are definitely going to be things that will set off that little dopamine rush that those kind of connections create. But it’s not a direct connection from a story point of view.”