Why So Blu?

The Haunting of Hill House: Season One (Blu-ray Review)

The Haunting of Hill House was another one of those Netflix shows where I heard from word of mouth that you should be binging this.  And binge that we did!  However, unlike say a Stranger Things for example, The Haunting of Hill House is a slow burn.  So instead of taking all the episodes in within one 24-hour period like we did with Stranger Things it took about a week to get through this one.  That’s not to say it’s not as good as Stranger Things, but instead Hill House takes a lot more dedication and attention because of its intertwining timelines.  Therefore, it took a little bit longer to get through.  Much like the positive buzz I heard prior to watching all I can do is smirk when I think how well done the horror drama The Haunting of Hill House was.  Very rarely do we also get Netflix releases on the Blu-ray format so it’s with great honor that I tackle this October 15th Paramount title for y’all.  Here goes nothing.

Season 

Did you know that The Haunting of Hill House is Certified Fresh with a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and nominated for six Saturn Awards, including Best Streaming Horror & Thriller Series?  Not bad!  It was also renewed by Netflix as an anthology series (The Haunting of Bly Manor), which means it’s telling a new story each season.  Therefore, this season we’re discussing here is obviously a self contained one. Also, just in case you’re not in the know, The Haunting of Hill House is a supernatural, modern day reimagining of Shirley Jackson’s 1959 legendary novel about five siblings who grew up in the most famous haunted house in America.  The series was created and directed by Mike Flanagan for Netflix under the Amblin Television and Paramount banners.

What I love about this show is from the very first episode it was actually both freaky and scary.  I like that because very little scares me anymore.  The Conjuring movies are a joke to me, but for some reason The Haunting of Hill House was the real deal.  Go figure!  Before we begin though I do want to capture some of the major names here so you know who the star power is.  I’m going to focus most notably on the adult cast, but let it be known there are many time shifts throughout here where the cast flip flops between its adult and children counterparts (who are equally as excellent as the adults).  The bulk of the story revolves around the adult stars such as Timothy Hutton, Henry Thomas, Carla Gugino, Michiel Huisman, Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel, Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Victoria Pedretti.

I mentioned the time shifts so let’s talk about that real quick.  Our story begins here in the 1990s as we see the young Crain growing up in the large estate their parents are attempting to renovate and flip to build their dream home supposedly.  Obviously this is where the children discover the horrific truth about the place, that being it’s extremely haunted!  Their experiences obviously brings a lot of baggage into adulthood with both fear and psychological disconnects hampering mental health causing suicidal tendencies, drug abuse and more.  However, not all is for naught as some have learned how to capitalize off their disturbing past.  Take Steven (Huisman) for instance.  He is now a best selling author, but Luke (Jackson-Cohen) on the other hand isn’t so fortunate.  His life is one of poverty, crime and drug addiction.  It all starts here though with the death of one of the siblings (won’t spill in order to be spoiler free) and the children are forced to confront their past as they figure out the present and future.  Obviously as a result old wounds are re-opened deeply.

The plot, as mentioned above, alternates between the two timelines over ten full length hour episodes.  Many of the flashbacks depict what happened in the final night in 1992 when the family literally fled the mansion.  It’s extremely important to keep track of who is who through all the time jumps as the exploration of said characters is paramount.  What’s real and what’s not raises questions that the broken family must figure out.  Are they psychologically broken or does evil truly lurk in the shadows of the iconic Hill House.  Thankfully, due in part to the lengthy ten episode season, there’s plenty of time to deep dive into character development, explore what makes everyone tick and play around with the psychology of it all to not only produce frightening mindsets, but also formulate genuine, organic scare moments.  I just can’t stress it enough.  Pay attention to the connections between the children and their older counterparts.  The deep, emotional wounds of the characters are the glue which makes things stick here and truly keeps you invested.  If nothing else, the scares and production value of the show is well done too.  I can’t recommend this one enough.  It’s just very cool…and intriguing to see how everything unfolds.

Video 

• Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC
• Resolution: 1080p
• Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1
• Clarity/Detail: It really sucks that this show didn’t get a 4K UHD release since it was finished with Dolby Vision and HDR10.  However, beggars can’t be choosers here because things still look great.  Closeups on the actors clearly show everything such as freckles, hairs, stubbles, wrinkles, pores and more.  Textures look great also especially those of wood patterns, stone, stitches in shirts and even fur on a teddy bear.
• Depth: There’s a lot of detail in the environments and thus the depth of field is quite exquisite too especially in that big house we spend a lot of time in from the long hallways to that evil stair case.  Everything pops with three-dimensional qualities and it’s like the background is its own character here too.  I mean you have to stage frightful ghosts the appropriate way, right?
• Black Levels: The black levels all look dark and natural throughout the presentation.  No qualms here!
• Color Reproduction: There’s a murkiness too it all here.  Colors are grim and gray throughout much akin to matching that of the subject matter, but rest assured there’s still a lot of colors here under the shadows and all.
• Flesh Tones: The skin tones all look natural in appearance and their shades vary upon the lighting of the sequences.
• Noise/Artifacts: I wish I could say things were perfect here, but they are not perfect.  I found multiple examples of banding throughout.  I’m sorry.  Other than that though things do look great!

Audio 

• Audio Format(s): English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
• Subtitles: English, English SDH
• Dynamics: Overall I’m very pleased with the way things sound here despite the show originally being finished with Dolby Atmos, but I digress.  Yes it would have been amazing to get an Atmos surround track, but rest assured the Dolby TrueHD surround track offers everything you want to effectively bring home the scares, chills and eerie atmosphere of the haunted estate.  It’s intense and deliberate when it wants to be like slamming on walls and subtle when it suits such as the more dramatic moments of dialogue, whispers and whatnot.  Speaking of whispers they all sound incredibly audible and intelligent.  This track suffice to say offers a wide dynamic of range to play with here to deliver all the necessary scares you’d expect including the noisy pipes in the place too.
• Low Frequency Extension: The bass and low end is prominent throughout.  Remember the slamming on walls I just mentioned up above?  Well you can rest assured because of the LFE it sounds quite fleshed out here with big and powerful impact.  Other moments include the score, pounding in the chimney, club music, screams, a neck break and so much more.
• Surround Sound Presentation: Immersion is the key word here as that’s what this surround track aims to do with putting you within the middle of all the chills.  In addition there are many example moments to talk about here like a baby crying, ambiance, screams, intrusive club music and so much more as well,
• Dialogue Reproduction: The dialogue levels are clear, loud, intelligible and well prioritized throughout the episodes.

Extras 

The 3-Disc Blu-ray sets features all 10 episodes from the acclaimed first season here, including, for the first time, three Extended Director’s Cut episodes with never-before-seen content.  Yahoo!  The Blu-ray set also includes exclusive commentary by creator and director Mike Flanagan on four of the episodes (some pretty good content Bloody Disgusting has of it HERE).  Sadly there is not Digital Copy redemption of this series found within here.  If you want to stream it, Netflix is your go to here I guess.  I’m going to be a stickler here and limit my score in this section to only a 2 because there’s really not much in terms of extras like behind the scenes, making of, etc.  Now let’s take a closer look in the shadows here and see in deeper detail everything you’ll find here disc-by-disc.

Disc 1:

• EP 101: Steven Sees a Ghost
  • Steven Sees a Ghost Extended Director’s Cut
  • Steven Sees a Ghost Extended Director’s Cut Commentary by Director Mike Flanagan

• EP 102: Open Casket
• EP 103: Touch
• EP 104: The Twin Thing

Disc 2:

• EP 105: The Bent-Neck Lady
  • The Bent-Neck Lady Extended Director’s Cut
  • The Bent-Neck Lady Extended Director’s Cut Commentary by Director Mike Flanagan

• EP 106: Two Storms
  • Two Storms Commentary by Director Mike Flanagan

• EP 107: Eulogy

Disc 3:

• EP 108: Witness Marks
• EP 109: Screaming Meemies
• EP 110: Silence Lay Steadily
  • Silence Lay Steadily Extended Director’s Cut
  • Silence Lay Steadily Extended Director’s Cut Commentary by Director Mike Flanagan

Summary 

There you have it folks.  Sure there’s plenty of scares here, but this Paramount release is more about the deep dive into the characters, what makes them tick and what scares the bejesus out of them.  Along the way the mystery of their childhood is uncovered and in my opinion The Haunting of Hill House wraps up fairly nicely (left me satisfied).  What else is “paramount” about this anthology release is its production value, which boasts and glistens nicely here on Blu-ray Disc in both the audio and video departments.  Sadly there’s not much in the way of extras here, but you do get several extended episodes as well as some audio commentary so all is not lost.  I don’t know what else to say.  I would easily classify this as a buy, but if you have a Netflix account you can always check it out there.  This release to me is more for the folks interested in owning the finest presentation of Season 1 as well as checking out the “Extended” episodes.  Either way…I hope you have a Happy Halloween season and you that enjoy and/or enjoyed this stellar first season of this anthology series.   Trick or treat folks!

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DISCLAIMER: This 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray review was judged and graded using the following 4K certified Ultra HD Premium television set found here and player here.  Make sure to check out all our 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray reviews archived here.  The images used above within the review are not actual 1080p screenshots.  They are for illustrative purposes only.  

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