Stephen King, master of all things horror, has endorsed The Haunting of Hill House, Netflix's take on Shirley Jackson's novel of the same name. The show arrived on Netflix last Friday October 12 to soaring reviews. It's a family drama, ten horrific episodes about how people cope with trauma — except, in this case, the trauma comes from a very haunted place called Hill House. The show takes a broader view than Jackson's book, expanding the narrative into a meta-discourse about a family involved in the publishing of a book titled, well, The Haunting of Hill House. (The Crain family, the central people of the show, are a family made famous by the book, which in turn haunts them just as Hill House did.)
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All of this is to say, HoHH is right up King's alley. The reigning president of horror literature, King is the foremost authority on scary things. He tweeted, "THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, revised and remodeled by Mike Flanagan. I don't usually care for this kind of revisionism, but this is great. Close to a work of genius, really. I think Shirley Jackson would approve, but who knows for sure."
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, revised and remodeled by Mike Flanagan. I don't usually care for this kind of revisionism, but this is great. Close to a work of genius, really. I think Shirley Jackson would approve, but who knows for sure.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 17, 2018
A work of genius! That's high praise coming from someone who has himself had his works adapted into TV. King's novels have produced, in recent memory: 11/22/63, a Hulu original; The Mist, a Spike TV series; Under the Dome on CBS; Mr. Mercedes, an AT&T Audience Network series; and Castle Rock, another Hulu Original. Castle Rock, King's most recent TV adaptation, is a loose amalgam of all of King's Maine-centric works. Unlike HoHH, the show did not get favorable reviews. So, maybe next time, King can collaborate with HoHH creator Mike Flanagan?
Editor's note: A previous version of this post misstated the network that carries Mr. Mercedes. It is not a British TV series.
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