The Haunting Of Bly Manor: 5 Ups & 4 Downs Review

10. Up - A Perfect Setting

As one would expect in a haunted house series, Bly Manor is beautifully and atmospherically captured by Flanagan. The Elizabethan house is a character in its own right, consisting of a suitably spooky series of deserted corridors and rooms, each one lit and framed in gothic splendour, with certain areas draped in white sheets that threaten to take on a life of their own.

Like so many countless ghost stories that have come before it, including Flanagan's own Hill House, the ambience is everything - a multitude of dark corridors, shadowy corners and moonlit drenched hallways all hide secrets of their own and more often than not, the viewer is compelled to quickly eyeball each frame, in case there are shifty supernatural hijinks happening that are not immediately obvious. The eyes on painted portraits appear to follow you across the room and mirrors reflect on the traumatic past of at least one of the main characters here.

The grounds of the house are also a prominent feature of the story, in particular, the lake and the chapel, each one playing important narrative roles in the story. True to form, rolls of unnaturally thick mist cover the lake and gardens, like some elaborate, operatic smoke machine is permanently installed to cue up the cushion grabbers as the ghosts begin to repeat their nightly torments of the living.

In short, Bly Manor looks fantastic and every bit as haunting as the title would suggest.