“The Bent-Neck Lady” aka HOLY SHIT
TV Review // The Haunting of Hill House
Hello! How’s October going? What are ya drinking? I was thinking of calling you people something. Heartthrobs? Crushers? Ew, literally anything but any of those, Nicole? I’m basically talking to myself here, but it’d be nice to pretend to have a fan base to name. Have you started the newest season of “Haunting” yet? I’m currently waiting for my roommate to catch up so we can watch it together. Great excuse for why I’m behind hehe
Now that the formalities are out of the way, are you ready to experience some of the best television to come out in the last 5 years? Now, many things can get me to awkwardly ramble at you out in public. Listed, but not limited to: Any mention of Parasite (seriously, please watch it), Dermot Kennedy, and episodes 5 & 6 of “The Haunting of Hill House”
Starting with this episode going into the next, the show pays off the emotional build up that we have witnessed so far with the Crains. “The Bent-Neck Lady” finishes off the sibling backstory with the tender-hearted and tragic Nell. As we witnessed from the very first episode, she has been haunted by the apparition of a wheezing woman with a neck that protrudes sideways, clearly the product of a hanging. As an adult, Nell is plagued by sleep paralysis and continues to see the bent-neck lady throughout moments of her life. I do wish the show had at least one flashback of the siblings post-Hill House, as teenagers. Perhaps that would give us more ties to how Nell desperately tries to keep her family together, despite Luke’s addiction and the asshole tendencies of Theo and Steve.
As an adult, Nell falls in love with a sleep technician named Arthur Vance, who she meets on a consult for her sleep paralysis. In a brief montage, we see the progress of their relationship and how Arthur helps her when she awakes frozen in the middle of the night. The Bent-Neck Lady is nowhere to be seen thus far. The tragedy (of many) comes one night after Arthur and Nell have been married for a year or so. It seems like a moment the couple is used to: Nell wakes up and cannot move or speak. Arthur notices and proceeds with the method they’ve established to get her out of it (gently speaking to her with soft grazes and making sure the light is on.) While he gets up to turn on the lamp, the lady appears at the base of their bedroom window. Arthur can’t see her, but Nell sure can. Suddenly, Arthur suffers a fatal aneurysm. One of the things about this show is that the tragedy comes from all angles. The major one being the knowledge of human being’s inevitable death, which is therefore always linked to those we love.
After Arthur’s death, Nell begins to spiral into a manic depression. She is shown reaching out to her siblings, who view her as immature or too lost in her own head. They slowly start to shake her off, too busy or emotionally unavailable to help her with her problems. Eventually, she becomes what many would call delusional (but we all know that the demons from Hill House are far too heavy) and makes the trip from LA to Boston to visit the home that is at the root of the Crain’s lives. Once she enters, it is not a crusted mansion, but a warm invitation with her whole family there, including Arthur. What we see though, while she dances with Arthur, is Nell alone in the cob-webbed halls, dancing in the dark. This is one of my top scariest scenes because it includes 1) the sudden absence of sound and 2) the thought of being alone in a house in the woods (!!!) Being fully involved in this illusion, when Nell sees her mom, she is excited to finally receive the locket that was promised to her as a child. The shocking reveal comes when Nell puts the locket on and falls to her death, being hung by the ghost of her own mom. Sure, that sounds shocking enough, but it’s the moment where the scene shows Nell falling THROUGH TIME to each moment from her own life where she saw the Bent-Neck Lady, telling us that she herself is the Bent-Neck Lady!!!! Literally speechless.
Summary: In short, it’s very hard to pull off anything surprising anymore with horror. Flanagan found a way to include one of the scariest ghosts into the tragedy of his softest character. He made his own rules. Again, casting here is just knock-out level. Nell really got the brunt of the pain, which hurts to watch when she gives Luke a ride to rehab, only to stop and buy him “one last hit” of heroin to have him shoot up in front of her. I oddly see a lot of myself in Nell as I’m sure a lot of other people do. Precious angel girl.
