The Haunting of Hill House: fright delight

Pick of the day: The Haunting of Hill House, streaming on Netflix.

Elizabeth Reaser and Michiel Huisman in The Haunting of Hill House. Picture: Steve Diet.

Pick of the day: The Haunting of Hill House, streaming on Netflix.

The most important thing to know about The Haunting of Hill House is that it is scary — so scary, you will see the supernatural and horror tropes coming a mile away and still get a fright when they arrive.

Perhaps it is best put by a character in the opening scenes as she recounts to an interviewer her story of being haunted by the grotesque spectre of her recently deceased husband. “You think you’d scream after seeing something like that, but you don’t, you just stare at it like you’re an idiot.”

The creator of The Haunting of Hill House — Mike Flanagan — is treating audiences as anything but idiots. This is not your average Friday night fare for teenagers or the tepid kind of programming that predictably appears around Halloween. The 10-episode series is smart, multi-layered and demands your full concentration, and perhaps even more than one viewing.

It is a modern reimagining of Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name, often described as one of the best ghost stories written.

It tells the story of five siblings who grew up in what later becomes known as the most famous haunted house in America. As adults, they are reunited by the suicide of their youngest sister, an event that forces them to confront the ghosts of their own pasts; some real, some merely in their minds.

The cast includes Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Michiel Huisman (Game of Thrones) and Elizabeth Reaser (Twilight), among others. The child actors playing the younger versions of the main characters are superb.

For a television show based on a somewhat similar premise (but sans ghosts), This is Us returns for its third season tonight (Eleven, 9.30pm). The Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series about a family of three siblings in two eras — their childhood and the present day — continues with the Pearson siblings celebrating their 38th birthdays.