The Haunting of Hill House ~ TV review

The Haunting of Hill House is a supernatural/horror television miniseries created and directed by Mike Flanagan for the streaming platform, Netflix. The 10-episode TV series premiered on the platform on October 12, 2018.

It's a fantastic TV show, so I'm inspired to do this quick mini review on it. I am a fan of Mike Flanagan's films such as Oculus and Before I Wake but for some reason I was dragging my feet when it comes to his many TV series that were currently available on Netflix. Finally this year, I took the first big step and watched the show, which is loosely adapted from the 1959 novel with the same name by Shirley Jackson. The show follows the Crain family, the husband and wife with their 5 children, and their experiences with paranormal activities after living at the Hill House. The show alternates between the time when the five children were still kids staying at the Hill House, and when they were adults still grappling with the tragedy that happened when they were kids.

I love how the way the show tells the story of the family; it took its time and slowly building up the tense and mysteries to finally revealed everything at the end. It's as much of a family drama as it is a horror story. The two elements blended beautifully. The first 5 episodes focused on each of the five children characters respectively (both when they were kids and adults), and I find that really helpful for me to get to know each of them and their struggles. There's also an episode each that focused more on the parents in the second half of the show.

Andhaghaaram (2020 Tamil film) ~ film review

Image source from Wikipedia

One of the best thing that Malaysians get is exposure to media and entertainment from so many different countries, and this is from free-to-air TV stations no less which is easily accessible by public. Unfortunately, this film will be one that is only available in select streaming platform (read: Netflix).

[Update] The film has been aired in one of the channel on ASTRO Malaysia (sorry I can't remember which channel), so the film is available on other platforms now.

Andhaghaaram is a 2020 Tamil supernatural/thriller film which is available on Nextflix starting 24 Nov. 2020. It starred Arjun Das, Vinoth Kishan, Pooja Ramachandran, Misha Goshal, Kumar Natarajan and Jeeva Ravi.

The film follows the story of three seemingly unrelated people; a blind and poor young man struggling to maintain the mansion that he inherited from his dead parents, a de-spirited cricket coach who felt guilty after his friend suffered an unknown mental disorder after receiving a book about occult from him as a gift, and a renowned psychiatrist who woke up from coma from the result of being shot by his own patient and found out that he had lost his entire family from the same attacker, as well as losing his medical license and his voice. These three stories which are told separately eventually intertwined to reveal the horrible connection between the characters involved.