The Fall of the House of Usher – A Midnight Dreary

Horror King Mike Flanagan is back with another Netflix series, and he has gathered his familiar cast of actors to breath life and death into Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” With each episode titled after Poe’s stories and poems, this 8-part mini-series acts as an amalgamation of all the gothic writer’s most celebrated and devoured works. It’s a modern take on a family’s curse whose wealth and power could not break. It is a horror story about the evils of a billionaire family who are all fighting to succeed the family’s patriarch in what could be considered a take on Succession meets Dante’s Inferno.

Who’s Who in the Usher Family?

We begin at the end, literally, with Roderick (Bruce Greenwood), his granddaughter Lenore (Kyliegh Curran), and his twin sister Madeline (Mary McDonell) attending a triple funeral. Whoever these three were they were not loved by many–as seen by the majority of empty pews in the church. Who died and how are they tied to Roderick Usher? Let’s get a little backstory on this large and powerful family.

There is, of course, the uber-wealthy Roderick and his twin sister, Madeline–both of whom run a pharmaceutical company called Fortunatos. In what feels like a very familiar story, the Usher family made billions off of a patented opiate drug they marketed to just about everyone. From the elderly to the young, to cancer patients to a simple headache, this miracle drug masked all levels of physical pain but ended up inflicting unimaginable grief upon millions of families. The mountain of bodies left in the wake of the opiate epidemic is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this family’s crimes against humanity. Expanding the toxic gene pool are Roderick’s six children– all from different mothers. In between managing the tech side of Fortunatos–think Elon Musk with better hair and even more contempt for humans beneath her, Madeline acts as the family’s matriarch but has no actual children of her own. In order of the Usher children’s birth: the oldest and next in line to succeed Roderick’s billionaire throne is Frederick (Henry Thomas), or as his siblings call him, Froderick. The eldest son idolizes his father and can be best described as a suck-up to the tenth degree. To say this man’s lips are permanently attached to his father’s backside would not be an exaggeration but like in most wealthy or royal families, being the next in line for the crown comes with its struggles. Throughout the episode, Freddie’s siblings mock him mercilessly for his “yes, Daddy” act, but his wife and daughter Lenore seem to respect him. Behind Freddie is Roderick’s oldest daughter, Tamerlane (Samantha Slowyan). In her muted fashion tones and frigid sexual repression, this married wannabe entrepreneur only thaws her disposition when the flames of sibling rivalry are stoked. Roderick’s attention and praise fatten their wallets and each of his kids wants a bigger share of the pie. Just like the second daughter, Camille (Kate Siegel), the queen of PR and the all-knowing eye of the family. She is basically what would happen if George Orwell modeled his 1984 character Big Brother after Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Nothing gets past Camille; she has her hands in every one of her sibling’s pots and keeps track of all of their failures. The one sibling she zeroes in on the most is Victorine (T’Nia Milner), the sister right behind her and a woman with more brains than ethics, Victorine has chosen to work for their father’s biotech company– developing a heart device that she tests, poorly, on defenseless monkeys. If you are starting to get the impression that all the Ushers are horrible hounds of greed–just wait, there are two more! Next in the toxic gene pool are “the bastard twins” as Tammy-Tamerlane calls them. First is Napoleon–Leo, for short (Rahul Kohl). He seems less driven by this unattainable quest for their father’s praise and more into parting, infidelity, and financing video game creators. Finally, there is the youngest son, Prospero AKA Perry (Sauriyan Sapkota), the only sibling who isn’t viewed as a threat. The family consensus around Perry is that he is useless and no amount of shadowing Freddie at the pharmaceutical company can fix that. The man-boy is full of half-baked ideas and failing upwards; so when it comes to competing for their father’s attention and praise, he isn’t even in the running. Later we learn that Prospero isn’t as empty-headed as everyone assumes he is when he sits his father and aunt down for a pitch about a club he wants to build. The rule in the Usher family is that all the nepo-babies get a check for 50 million when they can prove they’re serious about a project–and let’s be real, it also needs to benefit the Usher’s accumulation of family wealth. Roderick–unlike his father, vowed to always keep his door open to his children–legitimate or not. It was his way of righting what he saw as Longfellow’s wrongs. Prospero is the last child in line for that generous handout, but unfortunately from the opening minutes, we learn all of Roderick’s children are too dead to enjoy it! That funeral of three was for the last of his surviving children, but how they all ended up dead is the real mystery behind The Fall of the House of Usher.

The End is Just the Beginning

At the funeral for Victorine, Tamerlane, and Frederick, Roderick’s granddaughter Lenore– a name taken from Poe’s poem “The Raven.” The young Usher tries to console her “Grampus” after being struck with a series of terrifying visions summoned by a mysterious woman only he can see lurking from the balcony. When Lenore asks him what’s going on, Grampus Usher says, “She’s here.”

Digging deeper into this family is the Usher’s longtime nemesis– the Assistant United States Attorney, Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly). We meet Dupin in his office surrounded by photos and newspaper clippings of the Usher family. He is not only familiar with the famous billionaires but he appears to be hyper-focused on a series of crimes he has been trying to pin on them for decades. Wealth was always their shield from consequences but from the looks of his office, his case is starting to catch some traction. Glancing through evidence we can see that all of Roderick’s children are not only dead but they died recently– all six within the last two weeks. It’s why he is suspicious when he is summoned to Eliza Usher’s mansion to meet with the family patriarch after the final funeral. When he arrives outside of a battered and barren home– soulless from shudders to the creaky front door, Dupin steps inside and follows the only light flickering from the kerosene lamps. There, Roderick sits alone across from an empty chair he motions for the Attorney to sit in. He might’ve lost his family but he has his wealth–which he brags about when he pours “Auggie” a drink worth two years of his salary. What is this all about? A confession but not for the crimes he is being tried for. This is about the one he got away with. Dupin–with a case that spans 75-plus federal crimes, can barely contain his smirk as if he is thinking, “Only one crime?” On the record, the billionaire waves his right to an attorney and says he is ready to answer most of Dupin’s questions. Not only is he guilty of all seventy-three charges he has been accused of, but  “I’ll tell you how my children died.” That wasn’t on the U.S. Attorney’s bingo card. He knows how they died and still isn’t sure what this has to do with him or the federal indictments. Roderick explains–in 3 parts, how it all started, he is going to narrate a lifetime to explain these deaths.

The first story starts in 1953 with a very young Roderick (Graham Verchere) and his mother, Eliza (Annabeth Gish), who worked as the personal secretary- and probable lover, to the vicious and cruel Mr. Longfellow (Robert Longstreet). Longfellow was the CEO of a pharmaceutical company called Fortunato–the same company the Ushers run now. Longfellow was so vile–according to Eliza, that she told her two kids to stay away from her work and his house. Rebellion intersected with curiosity and the twins, Roderick and Madeline (Lulu Wilson), were caught falling over Longfellow’s fence and right into the man’s abusive hands. At this point, it’s obvious that whatever relationship Eliza had with her boss–consensual or not, he was also her children’s father. What we do know is the man was quick with a fist towards everyone–especially Eliza, and still she somehow managed to find respect for the man she claimed was brilliant. Flash-forward a few years and we find a bedridden Eliza relying on faith to cure her from whatever illness was killing her. She refused medical help so the kids braved a chat with Longfellow– thinking her relationship with the man might inspire him to find a way to help. A desperate Roderick blurts out, “You’re the smartest man she ever met,” and adds that Eliza loved him, but even flattery doesn’t sway his father. So much for that God-like being Eliza praised, Longfellow acted more like the devil. Without help, she dies in her house with her children– who wind up burying her in the backyard due to her beliefs and her unexplained death.

The Rise of Eliza Usher and the Fall of Mr. Longfellow

Later that night Roderick is awakened by thunder and looks out the window to see his mother’s grave empty and her muddy footprints leading back to the house. He and Madeline call out for her but all they hear is the ticking of the hallway clock. Maddie starts rationalizing their fault in burying their mother alive, but was she alive? Covered in mud and with the strength of two men, Eliza rushes in from behind them and lifts Roderick in a stranglehold until Maddie yells out “Mommy!” and drops him. Eliza wanders outside in the rain with her two kids following closely behind and walks right up to the gates of Longfellow’s house. He walks out ready for a fight but she attacks first– strangling the life out of him on the steps of his home in front of his screaming wife (Sarah-Jane Redmond). It’s not the best way to find out your husband had an affair and fathered twins behind your back. So, once Longfellow is dead, Eliza joins him, and Mrs. Longfellow has some explaining to do. Rather than make sense of a killer zombie mistress, both families agree to an official story: Longfellow had a heart attack and Roderick got a job at Fortunato. In the present, Roderick tells Auguste his mother killed a powerful man and that secret– and the wealth that prospered from it, eventually became their family’s curse. A gloriously privileged yet deadly curse that trickled down to his children like a genetic disease. Auguste wonders what his mother and her crimes have to do with why he is sitting in the woman’s living room for a story hour; the past is in the past and Roderick is accused of crimes committed long after she died. The answer Usher gives is chilling, “Because she’s here. She’s right behind you.” Assuming this is a negotiation tactic, Auguste refuses to allow Roderick to usurp control of the situation so he doesnt turn his head to look. If he had, he would have seen a terrifying being lurking from the corner of the room. Whatever happened after Eliza killed Longfellow also caused the deaths of her six grandchildren.

In the second story Roderick tells, we learn how long Dupin’s distrust of Roderick goes back, it’s decades and across one criminal investigation after another. Most recently–two weeks ago, to be exact, the U.S. The Attorney’s Office brought the Usher crime family up on a mountain of charges to match the mountain of corpses their pharmaceutical company left in its wake. Their lack of ethics cost countless lives and as the episode unfolds, we learn the opiate epidemic is only part of it. From poisoning the land to sketchy drug trials, animal abuse, and graverobbing, this family is a menace to the living. In court, Dupin’s opening statement is compelling but the Ushers do not seem worried, “They believe people like them don’t go to prison,” Dupin tells the jury, but not this time, he has an ace up his sleeve. The government has a mysterious witness ready to pull back the cover on all the Usher family secrets. Dupin won’t reveal who this person is but it seems like they have intimate family knowledge and that could be a problem. After court, Roderick calls an Usher family meeting to smoke out this traitorous mole, and that kicks off a race between the siblings to bring their father a traitor’s head and hopefully knock one of their own out of the line of succession. Could the informant be Freddie– the CEO of Fortunato’s and a man who publicly worships his father? Maybe it’s one of the “twin bastards,”  Leo and Perry? Tamerlane seems to think it could be any of them. S tells her work-out guru husband that their hired girl for the night is on hold until they figure out who it could be. Everyone in the family is a suspect–but it is no surprise Camile wants it to be Victorine. We have no idea what caused the animosity between the sisters, but after Victorine used untested drugs on a chimp she killed during a test procedure, she now has the feds on her back and it could delay the company’s human trials. If the monkey dies, the humans surely will too, and that’s an issue if Daddy expects her to succeed. What about Juno–Roderick’s young and stylish wife who has a taste for the finer things like heroin and vintage couture? Everyone is pointing fingers and their father’s fixer, Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill). is looking into all of them. Madeline–who exists somewhere on the spectrum between socially inept genius and homicidal girl boss, tells the family she will make sure this informant is neutralized–permanently. Whichever family member brings her or her brother the traitor’s name will be awarded an additional fifty million dollars. Madeline is the perfect bad cop to Roderick’s good, and that might be why she rolls her eyes when Prospero pitches his hedonistic sex and whiskey club. He rattles off some half-baked idea that sounds like his idea could make Studio 54 look like a nursing home, but his aunt and father aren’t feeling it. He doesn’t come off as serious, so the coming-of-age money is on hold until he can come up with something more than Club Caligula.

Jumping to the present, Roderick admits he is responsible for the kids’ deaths but a woman helped him; a mysterious and deadly woman who seems to pop up whenever Ushers drop.

New Year’s Eve 1979

In the third story, Roderick tells Dupin is the night everything changed for Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. It all started when Young Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald) and Young Roderick (Zach Gilford) needed a place to lay low from the police. We aren’t sure what crime these two committed this time, but we know they need an alibi, and showing up to a bar dressed like Jay Gatsby and his tragic love, Daisy, is sure to get noticed. The bartender, Verna (Carla Gugino) – who is familiar in a very unsettling way. Perhaps it’s because she resembles the woman present-day Roderick’s mind flashed to before that family dinner, right after his doctor (Paul Jarrett) told him something concerning his health, Or maybe she is the woman in the mask he spotted on the church balcony? Verma tells the twins “We’re sitting outside of time and space,” and cryptically predicts this encounter has shifted their fate. We see that prophesy play out when Roderick exits the church where he just said goodbye to his children and he sees a terrifying jester inside his limo, The vision knocks him down to the sidewalk, and with blood trickling from his nose, Lenore by his side, and the eyes of an all-knowing raven watching from above, he whispers, “It’s time.”