The Haunting of Bly Manor’s title alone tells you all of the important basic details you need to know about Netflix’s impending follow up to The Haunting of Hill House’s story about an unsuspecting family that ends up being torn apart by the malevolent energies radiating from their home. As was the case in the previous series, there are ghosts afoot, and they’re not exactly keen on the living.
Bly Manor’s latest trailer might not be what you’d call objectively “scary,” but it’s more than unsettling in the way it spotlights its cast of apparently hapless living people, as they move through the old house initially unaware that they’re all being watched by otherworldly occupants. As almost always tends to be the case with hauntings, the Wingrave children—portrayed here by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth and Amelie Smith—have some sort of affinity for the supernatural that allows them to perceive their home’s ghosts before the adults do. But of course the kids don’t understand that the apparitions might not mean them harm.
As the trailer chugs on, though, you see that the ghosts will make themselves known in a variety of ways. Including, but not limited to haunting people’s dreams while they sleep, and invading their minds while awake, which again is creepy, but, well, it’s also just very rote ghost stuff.
If The Haunting of Hill House is any indication, Netflix is merely playing coy and smartly keeping all of its best scares for the show itself—and letting the audience come into things not know just what all to expect. Hopefully, when Netflix finally invites everyone to visit Bly Manor on October 9, the series will properly scare the crap out of us. But not too much, as this year’s already been exhausting.
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