We’re just hours away from the premiere of Mike Flanagan‘s last series for the Netflix streaming service, the Edgar Allan Poe-inspired limited series The Fall of the House of Usher. The show is set to begin streaming this Thursday, October 12th… but if you want to know the episode titles, the runtimes, and the writing and directing credits before Usher is released, the folks at Mike Flanagan Source have us covered.
Here’s the line-up:
Episode 1: A Midnight Dreary (56 minutes) – Written and directed by Mike Flanagan
Episode 2: The Masque of the Red Death (61 minutes) – Directed by Mike Flanagan, written by Mike Flanagan and Emily Grinwis
Episode 3: Murder in the Rue Morgue (60 minutes) – Directed by Michael Fimognari, written by Mike Flanagan and Justina Ireland
Episode 4: The Black Cat (62 minutes) – Directed by Michael Fimognari, written by Mike Flanagan and Matt Johnson
Episode 5: The Tell-Tale Heart (60 minutes) – Directed by Mike Flanagan, written by Dani Parker
Episode 6: Goldbug (57 minutes) – Directed by Mike Flanagan, written by Mike Flanagan and Rebecca Klingel
Episode 7: The Pit and the Pendulum (59 minutes) – Directed by Michael Fimognari, written by Mike Flanagan and James Flanagan
Episode 8: The Raven (76 minutes) – Directed by Michael Fimognari, written by Mike Flanagan and Kiele Sanchez
Here’s the set-up for Poe’s story The Fall of the House of Usher: Roderick Usher and his sister Madeline are the only two surviving members of the aristocratic Usher family. For many years, they have lived together in the ancient mansion which is their ancestral family home. Madeline Usher has been ill for a long time and is not expected to live much longer. Partly due to his sister’s illness and partly, he believes, due to the negative influence of the old mansion in which he lives, Roderick Usher has fallen into a deep melancholy. To help recover his spirits, he summons his old friend, the story’s unnamed narrator, to come visit him.
This limited series isn’t solely based on that story, though. Just like Flanagan and his writers drew inspiration from multiple different Henry James stories when crafting The Haunting of Bly Manor and multiple Christopher Pike stories when they made The Midnight Club, they’re mixing elements of multiple different Poe stories for this show (as you might have figured from the episode titles). Here’s the synopsis for the series: Ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth.
Carla Gugino (The Haunting of Hill House) is joined in the cast by Bruce Greenwood (Gerald’s Game), Kate Siegel (Hush), Rahul Kohli (Midnight Mass), Mark Hamill (Star Wars), Mary McDonnell (Battlestar Galactica), Carl Lumbly (Doctor Sleep), Henry Thomas (The Haunting of Bly Manor), Samantha Sloyan (Grey’s Anatomy), T’Nia Miller (Years and Years), Sauriyan Sapkota (The Midnight Club), Zach Gilford (Friday Night Lights), Katie Parker (Absentia), Michael Trucco (How I Met Your Mother), Malcolm Goodwin (iZombie), Crystal Balint (A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting), Kyleigh Curran (Secrets of Sulphur Springs), Paola Nuñez (Bad Boys for Life), Aya Furukawa (The Cabin in the Woods), Matt Biedel (Narcos: Mexico), Daniel Jun (The Expanse), Ruth Codd (The Midnight Club), Robert Longstreet (Halloween Kills), Annabeth Gish (Before I Wake), Willa Fitzgerald (Scream: The TV Series), and Igby Rigney (F9).
Characters include Bruce Greenwood’s Roderick Usher, “the towering patriarch of the Usher dynasty”; Mark Hamill as “a character surprisingly at home in the shadows”; Mary McDonnell as Madeline Usher, Roderick’s twin sister; and Carl Lumbly as Poe’s investigator C. Auguste Dupin. Gugino, who described The Fall of the House of Usher as “batshit crazy in the best possible way” when the show was in production, also gave some information about her character Verna: “There is a fantastical supernatural element to the story, and she is the manifestation of that. You could say she’s the executor of fate or the executor of karma.” Gugino added that the show has quite a lot of very dark humor, but also “really touches the soul”.
JoBlo’s own Alex Maidy gave The Fall of the House of Usher a 7/10 review that can be read at THIS LINK.
Will you be watching The Fall of the House of Usher? Let us know by leaving a comment below.