Ranking Every Episode Of The Haunting Of Hill House
3. Episode 6: Two Storms
Two Storms is the episode that's getting the most praise from fans and critics alike and it's easy to see why.
Easily the show's greatest technical marvel, the hour-long episode is comprised of a handful of several-minute-long long-takes, in which Flanagan's camera eerily roams from one character to the next, sometimes even switching between time periods within the same shot. In Flanagan's own words;
"The longest (take) was 17 minutes. There was no room for error at all, and if we made a mistake, we had to start over. We rehearsed for almost a month with our second team stand-ins before we even folded the cast into the process."
It's breathtaking to witness and features some of the meticulous cinematography viewers are likely to see in a film or television program this year.
One of the core elements of the episode that this style accommodates so well is the modern-set story of the entire family reuniting for the first time in years, the night before Nell's funeral. Featuring the entire cast united literally within the same frame is insanely powerful, feeling like a cross-over event in and of itself after viewers have seen the individual stories of each character.
This episode also gets bonus points for being the first time viewers get a look at Olivia in the midst of her Hill House-fueled insanity, in the long-take of Hugh running through the halls after her as the windows all shatter, and it is insane.