But why was the house pretty much evil throughout the whole series but at the end it was pretty much a happy place where you can bring your dying loved ones and their souls will keep living on in it? I didn’t like the ending for that reason. It made no sense to me how a such a dark and evil house could be such a nice place at the same time. Maybe I missed something?
shareThe family members each had secrets or unresolved conflicts which ate away at them from the inside. What they would experience in the house was directly tied to the guilt and fear they carried because of it.
Once they were able to deal with their own stuff, the guilt and fear isn't there and they can see the house in a different light.
[deleted]
That sounds a lot like The Babadook.
shareI am also trying to find a reasonable explanation for this sudden change of tone towards the house.
share[deleted]
I was kinda wondering the same thing but I think we're given a clue when it was said that the red room was more of a stomach than a heart. I think it just "eats" the weak/damaged. Who really knows if being there for eternity would really be happy?
shareI don't think it was happy but bittersweet. Misery loves company. The house keeps "wanting" but the ghostly inhabitants accept their eternity trapped there with at least their loved ones. Heaven alone or hell with someone?
shareReading the responses of others here helps make sense of the sudden shift in tone at the end, but to me the ending was way too stylistically dissonant from the rest of the series.
It's not that I wished for it to end with a terrible fate befalling the family, but a, basically, happy ending, even if "bittersweet" as was pointed out, just felt wrong, as if Mr. Brooks suddenly turned into Mr. Rogers... It really kind of spoiled the whole series for me.
Agreed last episode turned into a "This is Us' show
Aside for Poppy who else was terrorizing the family?
who was terrorizing Nellie or future ghost? didn't make sense at all or the house was doing it?
Agreed. Episode 10 came too abruptly. I still liked it. I'm getting the feeling that as a series, they're setting it up for each new season to have references to previous seasons as the ghostly inhabitants grow. Broke neck lady haunting the next buyer's or Nell trying to help protect the next people from Poppy, etc.
shareI have some friends that don't subscribe to any streaming services that I like to share different Netflix and Amazon productions with. I was really excited to show them Hill House then changed my mind when I finished episode 10 - that's how disappointed I was.
My explanation:
The house itself was never really 'evil'. It's just a warehouse for the spirits that inhabit it. It just seems evil because of the encounters between the spirits and the human inhabitants. The encounters are creepy because they are without an earthly explanation -- the scratching, the Tall Man -- but they aren't fatal or deadly in and of themselves. The spirits are mostly indifferent, doomed to carry on with some mission or purpose that they had in real life, i.e. the clock fixer, Mrs. Dudley at the end, the Tall Man...
Polly seems to the exception... a malevolent spirit with the ability to do physical harm. She really only interacts with Olivia and the twins, IIRC. Those three were the most 'frail' mentally so maybe she was attracted to that, or that weakness gave her the means to physically interact and harm them.
Hugh Crain and Steven Crain didn't fully see or experience any spirits until long after the others, again suggesting that their button-down mental/emotional stability couldn't be exploited, or didn't allow them to fully see the spirit world.
All guesswork on my part. This site seemed to have some pretty good answers too.
http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/feature/a868410/haunting-of-hill-house-finale-netflix-red-door-explained/
Maybe the House is like a mother, panicking when its children (inhabitants) are leaving (moving out) into the "darkness", like William who was sent away and came back with an insane wife (Poppy).
Maybe the house has put its paranoia onto Poppy and later Olivia. That might be the reason why it wants to kill/wake everyone in it. To protect them from fear, pain and grief of the outside world. And the ones who are accepting it (the deseased Crains and Dudleys in the end) can "live" on in harmony.
In all blunt honesty, it was a cheap way for it to feel like a "happy ending", and didn't fit the hopeless/desolate tone (Flanagan trademark) of the entire rest of the show. For one thing, Nell's speech at the end, was basically a rushed attempt to try and tie up/explain a lot of the loose/vague ideas that were kinda just thrown at the wall throughout the show. And for another, yes, the ENTIRE show, we are basically told that this place is PURE EVIL, one of the most dangerous, wicked places on earth. Yet then we have this sappy, "feel good" music playing at the end, showing Hugh's ghost reuniting with his dead wife and daughter (whom his wife helped kill), in the Red Room, THE most evil part of the house. We see Mrs. Dudley's ghost reuniting with the spirits of the children the house stole from her.
All of this with heartfelt, tear-jerker music playing, as if suddenly it's OK that these poor souls are literally trapped in a pure evil place, instead of passing on like they're supposed to. Because the house literally feeds off of spiritual energy over time. And as already illustrated with Olivia, it WILL corrupt you and make you part of its evil over time. Hence why her ghost was directly involved in the "suicide" of her daughter (who by the way was easily the kindest and sweetest of all the Crains). It's definitely NOT any sort of happy ending. Not only are their souls going to be trapped there for who knows how long, diminishing and "rotting" as the house feeds on them. But frankly, with the surviving Crains continuing to just leave the house standing, there is a 0% chance that more people won't EVENTUALLY be lured to the house, and even more ghosts will be added to the dozens of (mostly unexplained) souls who already dwell there.
The biggest tragedy, to me, is that if Hugh had been in his right mind, and hadn't listened to the Dudley's ridiculous request, all of the souls likely would have been freed, and Nell would be alive.
'In all blunt honesty, it was a cheap way for it to feel like a "happy ending", and didn't fit the hopeless/desolate tone (Flanagan trademark) of the entire rest of the show. For one thing, Nell's speech at the end, was basically a rushed attempt to try and tie up/explain a lot of the loose/vague ideas that were kinda just thrown at the wall throughout the show. And for another, yes, the ENTIRE show, we are basically told that this place is PURE EVIL, one of the most dangerous, wicked places on earth. Yet then we have this sappy, "feel good" music playing at the end, showing Hugh's ghost reuniting with his dead wife and daughter (whom his wife helped kill), in the Red Room, THE most evil part of the house. We see Mrs. Dudley's ghost reuniting with the spirits of the children the house stole from her.'
This, exactly. It was such a shift I got whiplash.