fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4328 ]

[ SECRET POST #4328 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4328 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[The Red Green Show]

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04.

[Overwatch]

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06. [SPOILERS for The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina]

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07. [SPOILERS for The Haunting of Hill House]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #619.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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07. [SPOILERS for The Haunting of Hill House]
https://i.imgur.com/P1ZJrSl.png

Agreed. It's a less typical ending for a horror movie and as an end to the series it felt like... I don't know... relief, sort of? That's not quite the word, but it was a nice change of pace after so much familial dysfunction.

Right? Jesus, these people suffered enough! If there's a season two I hope it's a prequel exploring who the ghosts were. Leave the Crains alone!

I read somewhere that if there's a season two, it'll be a new cast of characters.

I kinda like the idea for the original ending but at the same time I don't have the frothing hatred for the actual ending that a lot of fans seem to have. I guess I'm just happy with a really strong series overall and found the ending, while not necessarily the strongest part of the series, was satisfying enough for me to go "ok fine, they've been through enough" - also Hugh made me cry in the end. A LOT.

EDIT: I'd argue it still isn't a purely happy ending anyway. Both their parents and their youngest sister have been eaten by the house and are trapped in it with, among others...the ghost of the little girl the mother killed and the ghost of someone who seems to delight in tormenting others. So it's not as clear cut as "everyone lived happily ever after" Plus the fact the survivors are possibly in effect still an unfinished meal and could be lured back there at any moment?

Edited 2018-11-10 00:31 (UTC)

yeah, this

"there are precious things here, and not all of them belong to you" was a killer line, but what it really means? is that the house has HOSTAGES. forever. and if Steven wavers, or whoever comes after steven wavers, the house will start feeding again, because it remains undestroyed.

the final monologue is a little saccharine - but it's also Steven's voice/pov, convincing himself that it's okay to leave the place standing, because Nell and Mom and Hugh and the hudsons ETC are """living""" there. But they aren't living. The house is, and has always been, good at bait. At pacifying him.

I'm glad the remaining siblings got away from it again alive, but that's deeply unsettling in retrospect.

also I would ADORE a more in depth exploration of the Hills

the final monologue is a little saccharine - but it's also Steven's voice/pov, convincing himself that it's okay to leave the place standing, because Nell and Mom and Hugh and the hudsons ETC are """living""" there. But they aren't living. The house is, and has always been, good at bait. At pacifying him.

I just want to say i LOVE this take on it, it's so... unease-ifying? I think seeing it that way has made me love the show even more, and I already loved it!

For me personally, I don't consider any story with a happy ending "horror".

I still like the ending a lot though!

That is a pretty narrow definition of horror.

Eh. Probably, but it works for me, especially in the horror-fantasy grey area.

Agreed. I prefer horror comedy because at least you get a chance of a happy ending, not everyone dies and the evil thing continues to stalk innocents forever.

A lot of horror had a happy ending for at least one person, including classics by King, Straub, and Carpenter.

I guess it also depends what you mean by "happy" (which Carpenter are you thinking of?). But it's a definition that works for me.

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(Anonymous) - 2018-11-10 04:56 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2018-11-10 14:30 (UTC) - Expand

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froodle - 2018-11-10 21:45 (UTC) - Expand

Well, that's your call but it seems very silly and far too narrow a definition to be useful to most people.

To some extent I think I agree with this. I think it's really a question of what horror, on an existential level, means to a person. To me, horror as a genre is...almost inherently either malignant or nihilistic. Things go badly. Things degrade. Things descend into pain and fear and chaos. If the narrative is capable of ending happily, then it is not, fundamentally, a malignant or nihilistic narrative. And therefore, to me, it can still be a very scary narrative in parts, but it's not a horror narrative.

That said, to me there are degrees to this argument. For example, to me a movie like Mama [vague spoilers for Mama ahead] lingers somewhere in the space between "dark fairy tale" and "horror," and that's largely because of its ending. It doesn't end happily, but it does end with hope, and with a sense that the narrative believes in the protective power of love.

I guess I agree with you that a story with a happy ending isn't really horror - not to me anyway. But there is a lot of ground between "happy ending" and "darkest possible ending." And while, to me, dark endings make for stories that are far more quintessentially "horror," I think there's a whole lot of room for hybrid stories that are part horror and part something else.

However, for my money, the ending of Hill House was far to close to happy for my taste. It didn't seem narratively cohesive with the rest of the story. It was a jarring right-angle turn, and for me it strongly undermined the story.

Horror can be scary and/or gory. It brings up questions about survival and humanity and what makes us human, what we'll do to survive, what exists beyond our world and our lives.
But it doesn't have to be nihilistic.
Something like Santa Clarita Diet gets labelled horror because there's gore and a zombie-like protagonist. But it's not meant to be without hope and is deliberately humorous. Are you saying it's not allowed the horror label at all?

I would have been good with the Red Room ending, but I do like that they got a legit happy(ish) ending.

Or did they?

They did. THe original ending was them in the Red Room but the creators decided to change it.

Or was it?

Good Place Spoiler

(Anonymous) - 2018-11-10 02:39 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Good Place Spoiler

(Anonymous) - 2018-11-10 13:13 (UTC) - Expand

I had nothing against a happy ending, but the way it was just sort of... POOF EVERYONE LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER! seemed to not fit with the whole build up of the rest of the series.

Like... This house/the tormenting ghost(s) are evil enough to follow the Crains out into the rest of their lives, but suddenly ~love conquers all~ and everyone minus Nell/their dad escapes and lives happily ever after? It just didn't fit for me. It wasn't organic.

It is love BUT it is their father. He basically killed himself so he could protect them from the house.

on the one hand, I appreciate that Nell, as a force inside the house, is powerfully subverting it, and hugh manages to get olivia to do the same. I can see the three of them being a meaningful counterweight, but not one that could successfully unmake what the house is

similarly, the other siblings earn their happiness partly by finally coming together against the house - the house was *able* to reach into their lives before because of the ways they were broken and resentful and untrusting

BUT it's still an eternal malevolence, and it's important to me that the final monologue is in Steven's voice - trying to convince himself that it's right/okay to keep his promise and keep the house, because his mom is there, his baby sister is there, he's a believer now and everything is going to be alright...

(the house can wait)

I don't think it was that sudden or abrupt an ending, but different strokes.

Seconding this so hard. The ending felt bizarrely disjointed from what the story had been up until then.

I must admit, I probably wouldn't have liked the super dark, "they're all still in the red room" ending - but it would have at least felt like a far more natural continuum of the story.

Something I've been thinking about a lot recently is that lovely song they use at the very end, called "If I Go, I'm Going" by Gregory Alan Isakov. It's a gorgeous song, and in some ways it's lyrically very fitting for the story. But if you were to make someone watch the first one or two or five episodes of Hill House, and then you play them that song and tell them, "This is the tone the show is going to take at the end of the story," it's hard to imagine anyone thinking, "Yup, this fits tonally with the story I've been watching."

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