The Fall of the House of Usher – The Black Cat

By starrymag | October 23, 2023

By: Kelly Kearney

 

 

“I need a little p****,” says Napoleon Usher (Rahul Kohli) as he searches the local shelter looking for a replacement cat to the one he killed in the previous episode. After a bizarre night of drug induced bloodlust, Napoleon tries to right that wrong but instead of coming clean with his boyfriend about what happened to their cat, Pluto, Leo tries the old switcheroo and winds up paying a steep price for his lies. In the fourth installment of the MIke Flanagan series, the aftermath of Camille’s death turns the only Usher with a functioning heart into a raving, hammer swinging lunatic, and it’s all thanks to Verna.

 

Goodbye,Camille

After explaining the size and color of the cat he is looking for to Verna (Carla Gugino) who works at the animal shelter, we can assume Leo’s time is running out . After trying and failing to get him to adopt various other cats whose time at the shelter is running out, Leo spots a purebred black cat that looks exactly like Pluto but she’s not up for adoption. Ironically, Verna mentions she has a soft spot for the short timers as she tries to gauge Leo’s level of compassion for animals. She repeatedly opens the door for him to choose a better way–something neither of his recently deceased siblings chose to do, but he can barely hear her as he stares in amazement at this doppelganger cat who will fix all his problems. He pulls the “Do you know who I am?” Usher card, and offers to adopt all the cats in the shelter and give them to orphanages, and then fill the shelter with state-of-the-art equipment the cats would love. He is not leaving that building without Pluto the Second. Napoleon has made his choice and Verna– who keeps hoping to give these Ushers an easy death, is going to have to plan something extra special for this boy. Later, when he brings the cat home it scratches him on the wrist and takes off into the bedroom to hide like it knows that place is a kitty-crime scene. Ticked off at the less-than-grateful fur-monster, Leo examines the cut and that’s when his phone rings. His father is calling with news about Camille’s (Kate Siegel) death. That’s two siblings in less than a week and both died in shockingly horrific ways. Napoleon is in full-denial over this new loss, which is a coping mechanism Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) tells Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) he knows well. “It’s amazing how far you can get in denial” he says, because when you lean into it in times like these, it often works, if only because the problem goes away on its own. He calls it the “placebo effect” and that’s when they hear a rattle from the corner of the room and a basement door creaks open. Madeline (Mary McDonnell) is tinkering around with her gadgets down there and lets Auguste in on a little information about his sister. The woman is a  genius and ranked one of the smartest people in the world. She is so smart that “she quit Mensa because she was bored,” he says. Dupin jumps at the chance to include her in their conversation but Roderick skips right over his request and gets back to talking about denial. In a flashback we see the family meeting at RUE’s board room to discuss Camille’s death and Leo is really not feeling it. Out of all the Usher children, he seems to have the most capacity for love so he is the obvious choice for a family spokesperson to make the announcement to the media. Everyone is treating this death like it’s business as usual and he can’t take it. He was the last person to see her before she went to the lab and the two seemed closer than anyone else in the family– or as close as these greedy hounds of apathy and narcissism can be. Upset over the brief and cold press release they hand him to read, Leo lashes out at Vic (T’Nia Miller), questioning why Camille was at her lab in the first place, and what she’s been doing with those test monkeys that made them so violent. A stunned Vic tosses that blame to their father, and wonders if the fifty million dollar bounty inspired Camille to go poking around the monkey cages looking to pin the informant tag on her. That’s when Frederick (Henry Thomas) jumps up and starts talking about his maimed wife in the ICU, and Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan) cuts him off to yell about the federal trial being more important than everything else going on in the room. She also makes sure to mention how it’s impacting the launch of her business. Everyone’s barking at each other until Madeline orders them all to sit down–nobody messes with that woman. They can point fingers and yell at each other behind closed doors but once they step outside into the public eye, they need to keep it together. Cue Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill), who says he agreed with Camille, that Leo should be the face of the family’s grief. That’s when Juno Usher (Ruth Codd) pipes in to offer her condolences and Tammy cuts her off to ask everyone in the room why “it” is speaking. There is no love loss between stepmommy and Roderick’s grown children–who all seem to barely tolerate Juno in these family meetings. Of course, Frederick jumps in to defend the woman because he is always putting on his best face for Daddy, and that ticks Tammy off and the two start bickering back and forth. Meanwhile, Leo is hyperfocused on that announcement because it feels cold and too brief for the sister he’s grieving. He lashes out at everyone in the room for their lack of care, but hey, Tammy cares, she is the only one worried about Camille’s feelings when the announcement mentions her age. Thirty-five years old? Camile would drop dead (again), before she allowed that truth to hit the presses. Everything is superficial with these people and Leo can’t seem to stomach it. He starts ranting at his father to keep his fifty million dollar nest egg because he is not reading that statement. Roderick doesn’t care what he says to the press, he just wants the family united; one brick wall protecting them and their Fortune from the legal system chipping away at them everyday. They have a family member in the hospital, two dead siblings, and court cases popping up everywhere. They need to protect themselves. Until he gets to the bottom of all of this terrible luck he wants them to do everything that their aunt tells them to do. “We’re at the Battle Stations and I’m the commanding officer. I don’t want to hear anything but sir, yes sir.” Leo is a loud “no sir” on that and storms out of the office with Pym and Roderick glaring at him the whole way. Next, Arthur brings up the security footage from the night Camille died because he noticed the night guard, Phillip, was replaced by a fill-in sent down from corporate. Roderick has no idea who pulled Phillip or who that female replacement is, but this is the second time a mysterious woman showed up to the scene of a family tragedy. When Pym zooms the image in the face is too blurry to recognize but Madeline says she will have someone clean it up. The only thing they know for sure is R.U.E. doesn’t employ any female guards, so that woman shouldn’t have been there. Madeline starts to tie the woman from the party to the security guard and says until they can figure out who she is, it’s time to “take up arms. We are at war.”

Sympathy Pleas and The Old Switcheroo

 

After that meeting, Napoleon  is melting down over his dead siblings. He is tearing apart his closet looking for an appropriate camera-ready black suit  but the video gamer doesn’t have one. As he rants at Julius (Daniel Chae Jun) about how this is all too much for him the topic turns to Pluto the cat, and that only raises the tension in the room. Julius can’t find the cat again, and Leo says she is just skittish–or maybe she doesn’t like cosplaying their murdered pet? That’s probably it because when Leo goes to hang up one of his suits the cat comes flying out of the closet at his claws first. She already got him on the wrist, so this kitty wants payback!

Back in Court, Attorney Dupin asks the judge to do something about the empty defense table. The Usher’s and their lawyer are either late for court or purposefully delaying. When the judge asks him what he thinks he should do about it, Dupin sheepishly notes it seems like there are a different set of rules for powerful defendants like the Ushers. Cue the backdoor, and Mr. Pym marches in with apologies for being late, He was with the family who just got news about the death of Camille. The court gasps, and it seems the sympathy angle Camille planned to use for Prospero’s death is working for her own. The court convenes until Monday as Dupin gets Pym’s cold shoulder when he asks for more details about the death. To say he doesn’t trust this family not to use these losses to skirt the charges is an understatement. He has no grace whatsoever for the Ushers, and that shows in the way he forces out an apology to Arthur as he walks out of the court.

Next, we head over to the lab where Vic is trying to convince her father that she’s not the family rat. He knows Camille had a nose for secrets and she was at the lab following some scent. Either she was chasing a rat for the bounty or she was onto something with Vic ‘s work, either way she looks guilty and he demands to know what she’s hiding. Vic adamantly denies both scenarios and blames him for the bounty that led Camille to the monkey lab. She thinks the sister who openly hated her was trying to sabotage her work. Speaking of, the monkey, who killed her has been destroyed but all Roderick cares about is the heart device that was in its chest. The same device he is hoping can prolong his life from dementia and why she is rushing these trials and using experimental killer drugs to do it. He worries if the police take the monkey as evidence, they will find the device and know Vic is performing illegal medical trials. Fearing more criminal charges he wonders if he should just pull Vic’s funding and dissolve the program before it’s too late. He can divide the money between Tammy’s new business and Leo Video games instead. He dangles that 50 million over each of their heads like a sword– always threatening to let the sharp edge of the blade drop down and slice their dreams and fortunes to pieces. To please him she gives him good news: the human trials are starting.  That is enough to change his mind and he turns on the proud papa charm.

Back to Arthur, he is at Freddy’s with a burner phone he found in Morelle (Crystal Balint) belongings left behind at the scene of Prospero’s death. Frederick is shocked and also in denial because has never seen that phone before and he would know, he knows everything about his wife. The fact he is shaky and stuttering through the conversation with Pym says he is worried the phone is a sign his wife has been unfaithful. Especially when Arthur refuses to answer if he recovered Morelle’s wedding ring. It’s a key she wasn’t wearing and rather than watch Freddy breakdown, he orders him to figure out the burner phone’s password and then leaves the oldest Usher son to stew in his emotions.

Madeline managed to clean up the photo of the security guard and when the photo is texted to her and Roderick the twins are stunned. It’s a face from their past –1979, to be exact, but it hasn’t aged a day. This prompts MAdeline to visit the bar that’s now boarded up and covered in graffiti. A black raven painted above the door leads her eyes up to the actual raven flaring at her from the building’s roof. This bird is directly tied to Verna but what we’re not sure about yet. The only thing we do know is that in the basement of R.U.ERoderick stares at the photo of Verma while he hears a “Telltale” rattling behind a brick wall. At the same time we see Verma AKA Pam at the hospital signing documents to join Vic’s experimental heart device trial. That drug still isn’t any safer and Vic isn’t even sure if the device works, but Pam puts her trust in the woman hoping she has a change of heart and chooses that peaceful death that’s coming her way. Of course, she doesn’t, and another one of Roderick’s children failed her test.

 

Denial, Displacement, and Flashbacks to Better Days

 

Over at Leo’s apartment, he’s dosing up on sleeping pills but still can’t sleep. While Julius tries to tire him out in bed, Leo can’t get in the mood as he sees the glowing eyes of that stand-in cat staring at him from the corner. When he turns to look away he notices his hand is covered in blood and the shock causes him to accidently hit Julius in the face. The blood was from a dead rat under his pillow–that cat is leaving him very threatening gifts.

We head back to Eliza’s house where Roderick is talking to Dupin about Leo’s,”Denial, displacement, and projection” the three ways of coping with loss that his son and him have in common. The difference, he explains to Auguste, is that none of his children have  his sublimation–the ability to redirect their emotions in more productive ways. As he’s explaining this to Dupin we get another jump scare when the bloodied body of Leo’s falls from the ceiling onto the floor between the two men. Roderick practically jumps out of his seat yelling and Auguste looks at him like he has lost his mind. He still can’t see any of the ghosts that are wandering around the decrepit mansion and takes offense at being yelled at. Roderick apologizes and says it was not his fault and uses the nickname “Auggie” to make a point that there’s no bad feelings between the two men– at least coming from his side. That’s when we flashback to the day these two first met. Roderick says “I saw the world different after we met,”  he says, “but I  never imagined we’d end up here though.” When the doorbell rings we see a young Roderick (Zach Gilford) open the door to a young Dupin (Malcolm Goodwin) who is investigating a possible fraud case at Fortunatos. He is looking for anyone at the company who can help him make sense of some inconsistencies in the company’s clinical trials. Right away we can tell Roderick isn’t much interested in helping make sense of this but Annabel (Katie Parker), his wife, is all smiles and questions. He explains that the patients aren’t aware of what they are signing up for–nobody informed them of the dangers and side effects of this drug they’re testing. The reason why he asks for Roderick to clear things up is because his signature is also on those papers. Right away Annabel says it doesn’t look like his signature but Roderick takes the company line and says he doesn’t recall signing them but he’ll be sure to look into it. He’s definitely hiding something, and both Augustet and Annabel know it. According to Dupin, everyone at Fortunatos seems to have a memory problem because they had the same response. The harder it is to figure out what’s going on the more suspicious and determined Dupin becomes. Before he leaves, he says he understands why Roderick doesn’t want to go up against a billion dollar company that cuts his paychecks. He noticed their kids’ handmade toys and at- home cold remedies for a sick child. He knows they live hand to mouth–just like he does and Usher doesn’t want to risk losing his job by talking about whatever’s going on at work. He leaves his card just in case Riderick has  a change of heart and decides to do the right thing. He Appeals to their decent side having no idea Roderick doesn’t have one, as we see when he takes his concern to his boss, Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) the following day. His signature was forged, but Griswold doesn’t want to hear about it. He asked if Roderick is a team player.. Everything they do at Fortunatos could be at risk if he talks. Rufus mimics what Roderick said in the opening scenes of the episode; all he wants to hear from Roderick is to keep his mouth shut except for a “sir, yes sir.”  It seems Roderick is 100% on the team and any concerns he had for his part in duping patients into these trials matters less than getting ahead in his career. For  his silence and loyalty, Griswold gives Roderick a promotion and then promises his name won’t show up in any more forms. If he continues to do what Griswold says and plays his cards right, one day he might be sitting where he is: the Candyman of this Willy Wonka Chocolate factory. This is Roderick’s golden ticket, if he takes it he gets a raise and a promotion and the trust of the man who can make or break his career.

Later, that night he fills his wife and Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald) in on what happened. Ananabel wants him to quit his job but his twin sister has other ideas. This company is their birthright–their father built it and it belongs to them. She tells him to go to work and do everything that Rufus Griswold asks of him but also contact Dupin and play both sides from the middle. He can sic Dupin onto Rufus and take their father’s company back.

 

The Hunter and Her Prey

 

Back to the present and Leo is noticeably struggling with drugs. He could always handle the party life but since his siblings death, Jules says his usage is getting out of hand and he is sick of it. After his boyfriend leaves–and Leo assumes it’s for good,  Frederick is at the door looking for his brother ro hook him up with something to take the edge off. Freddy isn’t the type to use drugs but after his wife got melted at their brother’s club and now he thinks she was cheating, he needs to get high. When Leo goes to his closet where he keeps his stash to grab a bag of cocaine, that evil cat jumps out and scratches him in the eye. He yells to Freddy to grab the cat but his brother doesn’t see anything, just the bag that he swipes as Leo tries to flush out his eye.

The brothers aren’t the only messy siblings, we briefly check in with Tamerlane who’s testing out her Peloton knock-off I.Billt–named after her husband. When she logs in she notices Candy– the escort she hired, in the background of Bill’s (Matt Biedel) workout class. Later, when she confronts him about it, assuming he has made the deadly mistake of cheating on her, he denies ever seeing the woman in the class and promises to avoid her if she shows up again.

Back to Leo who is being bombarded with this new cat’s bloody presents. He’s so sick of it he calls the woman from the shelter to come find the cat and take it away. In comes Verna with her cat carrier talking about apex predators and their skills of hiding and hunting. He shows her his bathtub full of dead animals he has found around the apartment, and wants her to put this little hunter down. When she hears this she knows his choice is made; an easy death just isn’t what these people want. She tells him the reason why he can’t find the cat is because it slipped inside the apartment’s wall. He focuses on listening as Verna leans over to lick his ear. When he jumps away from her feline-like advances, the cat attacks him from behind and starts clawing and biting his throat! Leo fights back by shoving his fingers in the cat’s eye and that’s when we see Verna with one eye dangling onto her cheek and licking her hand like a cat. Before he can make sense of that, she disappears and Leo can hear the tiny feet of a cat running all through the walls. He thinks that maybe Jules is right; he needs to take a break from drugs. The sound in the walls quickly drives him to madness so he grabs a replica of Thor’s hammer and starts smashing the walls looking for the cat. When he reaches inside one of the holes he made, the cat latches onto his hand and disappears further into the walls. While he is doing battle with a Catwoman, his brother Frederick is snorting lines of cocaine beside his wife in the hospital. SHe is still unconscious so he removes her pulse-oximeter and tries to read her fingerprint. When that doesn’t open the phone, he pulls the bandages off of her face and hopes the phone can recognize her through all those chemical burns. Neither work and Freddy is beyond frustrated.

Meanwhile, Roderick gives us a hint about what’s going on with him and his young wife, Juno. Why would a billionaire want to be married to a drug addict half his age? It turns out Juno has read the reports about Ligodone and while she loves the drug she’s thinking about taking a break. Roderick convinces her that quitting is a bad idea; she is a walking representation of Ligodone’s success. He didn’t marry a wife, he married an alibi, and Juno seems savvy enough to know it–even if she doesn’t say it. While trying to seduce away her rehab ideas, the melted corpse of Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota) interrupts them and puts a damper on his mood. He is so freaked out that the concerned Juno calls Madeline to come help and that’s when Roderick comes clean and tells her he is battling the same illness that killed their mother. Madeline’s processing information by bargaining with the fact that a diagnosis like that  gives people roughly 5 years to live. Unfortunately for her brother, he is advanced.. He assumed all of these hallucinations were from the disease but each one seems more real than the last. Madeline mentions Vic’s heart device and says she will make sure her niece gets that ready–the sooner the better.

Later, When Jules comes home he finds Leo smashing through the walls and screaming about Pluto the cat. Just when he thinks he has finally caught it behind one of the last standing walls in the apartment, he sees a dead Verna and the cat escapes to perch on the railing of his balcony. Julius has no clue what he is talking about–he doesn’t see the cat or the dead woman, but he does watch his boyfriend grab that hammer and go charging towards the balcony door. In one deadly swing, Leo misses the cat but flies right over the railing and lands on the concrete below. That’s three Usher children down and three more to go, but the mystery of who Verna is and what she has to do with Ravens still lingers on.