The Haunting Of Hill House Review: 7 Ups & 2 Downs

4. It's Incredibly Poignant

An even bigger surprise than the show's focus on its actors is how emotionally resonant it is.

This is an overwhelmingly sad, powerful story about the ghosts both literal and figurative that haunt people, examining how we as western humans deal with death, while also leaping off to explore subject matter such as drug addiction, mental illness, and child abuse without ever getting too melodramatic.

It's incredibly rare for the horror genre to achieve true poignancy, and yet this show manages it because it's not driven by schlock set-pieces, but rather by the human beings at its core.

While the show is mostly dominated by grim happenings and ugly emotions, it also conjures up sweet, human moments on occasion, and only in the final stretch does this ever start to feel a little too gooey for its own good.

There are moments in this show which may well leave you legitimately emotionally shook, and how often can you say that about a horror TV series?