Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House horror still cuts deeper than any demon— Conjuring doesn't stand a chance

‘It’s a twin thing.’

That’s the line that remains burned into your memory after Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House, one of the most tragic, painful horrors in recent times. The real jump-scares here weren’t just the ghosts suddenly jumping out at people, or peculiar shrieks in the dark: It was the quiet unravelling of a family and the fissures in relationships that never quite recovered, years after the death of loved ones. The show was soaked in grief, guilt and how memories pull a person apart psychologically.

That’s the real horror: Our own demons. And they haunt us more than the real ghosts.

It’s this idea that binds the show together. The biggest misconception about the show is that it follows the travails of a family after they move into an old haunted house, a tired, worn-out trope. It’s true, the house has its own spectres, and that’s what begins to damage the mother Olivia (a fabulous Carla Gugino), who gradually loses control over herself and family. Her husband’s drastic but only choice to save the family from her results in animosity.

But years later, they all reunite for the broken, battered and isolated Nell, the youngest in the estranged family, (Victoria Pedretti) who has been haunted the ‘broken-neck’ lady, a spectre who somehow never left her side throughout her life. There’s a reason why the lady keeps appearing in Nell’s mind, and in one of the most climactic moments of the show, it’s revealed why she is so deeply seared into Nell’s psyche.

The siblings and father have to put aside years’ worth of hostilities, for Nell--they couldn’t be present enough during her life, and so in death, they must make reparations. She’s the glue who ironically keeps them together, especially the voice of reason in her twin Luke’s conscience. The two feel each other’s emotions so violently and intensely that it’s almost uncomfortable, jarring, as Luke at one point even feverishly rambles about being cold, clammy, and that he can’t move his legs. A few seconds you learn why.

He has sensed Nell’s fate.

Even as the family battles the literal horrors of Hill House, the series never lets you forget the human ones — the fractures, regrets, and sins that haunt them just as much as any ghost. And more than the evils lurking, they need to confront and forgive themselves: For being selfish, for not listening to their sister when she needed them, and maybe, for not explaining the truth when they could. The resolution is bittersweet, as Nell quietly tells them, “I’m sprinkled over your lives like confetti.”

It’s horror that’s tearful, painful, and with such iron-clad storytelling that simple words are jump-scares. It gives you grief, catharsis, and a story that stays lodged in your chest.

Compare this with Hollywood’s horror machine. For years, its films have swung between mindless gore and overly safe clichés — sometimes landing in unintentionally funny territory. The Nun, from The Conjuring franchise, is a prime example. The story fizzled almost immediately, weighed down by absurdity: characters wandering into a clearly haunted church in the dead of night, only to nearly get buried alive in a graveyard.

The Conjuring did have much promise in the beginning: The first film had moments of real fear (the demon on the wardrobe can make you sleep with eyes open), and then it falls into the trap of the same priests, exorcism and chanting. And the next few films, became more flattened and hollow with the same premise being regurgitated in different ways again. The stakes always seem particularly low.

More than a decade ago, Sinister had promise: It had a rigorous pattern, with a slimy hand reaching into folklore of a monster kidnapping children and conniving them to turn into murderers. It was grisly, and so unsettling, and the ending stuck to its guns with a jarring twist. But that's just one of the few that focused on the story, rather than getting lost in scaring its audience.

Sometimes the scariest thing isn’t the ghost in the hallway — it’s the family dinner table.