10 Horror Television Episodes That Are Practically Flawless
7. The Bent-Neck Lady - The Haunting Of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill House' The Bent-Neck Lady stands as yet another prominent example that a horror series' best episode doesn't have to be saved for the finale.
Netflix's wonderfully unsettling supernatural horror produced several magnificent offerings long before the Red Room-centric finale, Silence Lay Steadily. Two Storms and Screaming Meemies are legitimately two of the finest horror episodes ever made. The fact that The Bent-Neck Lady surpasses them in terms of quality, highlights just what a flawless offering the season's fifth episode truly is.
The Bent-Neck Lady finally reveals the truth at the heart of Nell's tear-jerking story, as the horrifying entity that haunted the youngest Crain in her childhood returns, causing the death of her beloved husband Arthur. Destroyed by grief, Nell stops taking her medication and succumbs to the predatory effects of Hill House - she is killed by her mother's ghost after placing her neck in a noose that she believes to be the latter's locket.
Mike Flanagan wasn't quite done emotionally eviscerating his audience, however. Upon dying, Nell travels back in time, unmasking herself as the Bent-Neck Lady herself. The sense of horror as the audience realizes that Nell - having been preyed upon by the malevolent structure since the early days of her childhood - was always doomed to become her own tormentor is almost too harrowing for words.
Flawless this episode may be, but it's guaranteed to leave viewers in an emotional puddle on the floor.